


untamed and full of teeth

by arestlesswind



Series: Wilhelmina Graham [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic, Emotional Manipulation, Established Relationship, F/M, Fix-It, Gender Roles, Genderswap, Mental Instability, Mind Games, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 02:14:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3960553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arestlesswind/pseuds/arestlesswind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before her wedding, Will dreams of a dog.</p><p>Sequel to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014386">"As If Drowning at the Heart."</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well. So. This took a while, huh? If you'd like to read an introspective explanation why, that's [here](http://princess-sparklefistss.tumblr.com/post/119648381710/so-why-did-it-take-me-so-long-to-post-even-the). If I have any readers left at this point and you want to jump straight into the action, you know what to do. 
> 
> Picks up right where "As If Drowning at the Heart" left off, so prepare yourselves for domestic cannibal fluff with creepy undertones. It's an alternate season two, even though you'll see hardly anything from s2 in this fic, except for some similar character beats.
> 
> Chapters will be posted as they're put through final revisions, beta reads, and the filter of 40-hour work weeks. *fingers crossed* 
> 
> Possible trigger warnings: pregnancy, make-outs/implied sex, canon-typical violence and nightmares.
> 
> (Their cottage looks like [this](http://www.burlapanddenim.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Professional-Photo-of-House-in-Village-in-France1.jpg), except [pretty flowers everywhere](http://frenchcountryholiday.com/images/shutters-2.jpg).)

 

“How frail the human heart must be -

a throbbing pulse, a trembling thing -

a fragile, shining instrument

of crystal, which can either weep,

or sing.

(Sylvia Plath,  _I Thought That I Could Not Be Hurt_ )

 

“Which brings us back

to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,

not from the absence of violence, but despite

the abundance of it.”

(Richard Siken,  _Snow and Dirty Rain_ )

 

_____________________________________________________

 

The night before her wedding, Will dreams of a dog.

If it can be called such a thing. Mangled, matted, skeletal. Bones protrude through muscle tissue. The jaw hangs open unhinged. The fur soaked with blood, a black sheen in the moonlight.

It follows her soundless through the empty fields, nipping sharp at her bare heels. She stumbles at the pain, slips on something wet beneath her soles.

She keeps walking.

The light in the distance never grows closer, for all her travels, but the crops fade to grass. Dirt between her toes, twigs and ants, the breeze prickling familiar. Her porch rises up from the mist; hers, Wolf Trap. The screen door’s open and lights shimmer from inside. The aroma of warm food cooking travels the length of the yard to her nose. She knows it’s good. Her taste buds alight, and her heart quickens with warmth.

The dog sinks its teeth into her shin and hangs on. She keeps walking, dragging dead weight.

The feathered stag waits for her on the porch, near the front door. Before she enters, Will lets her body collapse on the steps. The stag nuzzles the back of her head, breath stirring her hair softly. Will reaches around and rubs the length of its snout. She listens to the rhythm of its breathing, and the dog barks.

_Bark. Bark. Bark._

She hides her face in the stag’s fur. It smells like the food from the kitchen, somehow. One does not question the logic of dreams.

When she wakes, it’s to a spring rain on her arms and Hannibal at her back. He takes her temperature, her pulse. The rain rolls off his pajamas and flattens his hair across his brow.

Baltimore. The middle of an empty street, not even four houses down. She blinks against the street lamps, high above like a search beam.

“Come inside,” he murmurs, soft as the raindrops. “You’ll catch cold.”

Her tongue’s heavy. “S’s not cold.”

His palm covers her open eyes. The surprised gasp twists its way out of her throat as a moan. Relief. Quiet. Darkness. Hannibal holds her there, upright against him, cleansing the corridors of her mind.

Will listens to the rain on the pavement and the rhythm of his heart against her back.

“Can you walk?” he asks, after a time.

“Mmm. Think…yeah.”

He leads her back home by the hand as he would a child. Dries her off with a towel and tucks her to bed, murmuring something foreign with the cadence of a lullaby.

It’d strike her as funny, infantilizing, if she didn’t need it so.

In a welcome change, she doesn’t remember her dreams come morning.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

By the time they arrive at the French coastline for their honeymoon it's nearly eleven o'clock on a Friday night and Will is suddenly, impossibly tired. She rose at six am to teach students ten years younger. She made case notes for Jack Crawford from the safety of her desk. She drove her dogs to Alana’s, who seemed happier to dog-sit an entire pack than most people would. She got  _married_. A wife, a bride, a newlywed, tucked under the arm of her husband as they stepped onto foreign soil and this is it.

A one-shot deal. 'Till death do us part, a train of thought Will would rather not follow.

But there was no shifting of the earth beneath Will's feet; some great morphing evolution. She added a brilliant gold band to her left finger, switched his mother’s ring to her right, and nothing changed except legal technicalities. She didn't even want a honeymoon, piles of work on her desk and the effort required meaningless, but Hannibal brooked no arguments – a rustic, preserved French cottage surrounded by woods and flowers and meadows, drooping vines and a hazy sun; luxurious and private, within walking distance of the ocean. No fuss, no spectacle, no crowds; somewhere where peace sits easy on her tongue.

And it exhausts her, bone-deep, body vibrating with her emotions and absorbing his so when they reach their bedroom (wide and open and arched windows, draped with pallets of crème and teal, she thinks of oceans), Will sinks onto the bed (piled high with pillows and a grand oak headboard) without bothering to remove her shoes.

“Are you well?” Hannibal asks instantly, surprise making him honest. “Is it the child?”

Child. Baby. Theirs, barely the size of a lima bean and mastermind behind Will's frequent nausea fits. Without opening her eyes she smiles into the duvet, satin-soft on her cheek, like some pathetic lovesick drunkard.

Will feels so full, full of all the life and love the world has to offer.

“I feel...” Will struggles to articulate, to grasp. “Different. Like the old me has wandered off somewhere I can't see, and a new one's sauntered into her place.” Pause. It's not enough; can't surmise. “I've never felt like this,” she settles.

No one can truly escape the heaviness of being alive, but there are passages to escape.

Like the dip in the king-sized bed as Hannibal perches close, the ridges of his knuckles stroking unspeakably soft down the length of her cheek. The width of his shoulders as he pulls off his jacket. His swollen, touchable lips. 

Will lies still and listens to the mere existence of him.

“I'm glad to hear it,” he says. He pulls her feet toward him one at a time to peel off her shoes. “I'm curious, though, which Will Graham I just married.”

“The new one. But that's okay. She feels – normal, I guess. Or the possibility of normal.”

She sneaks a peek through slitted lids. Hannibal staring down at her, head tilted to one side, face settled in accustomed adoration. His love no longer catches him off guard.

“You know you didn't need to do this,” she repeats. Will Graham, unused to things given without want, always deflecting and rejecting.

Hannibal silences her with a finger laid across her lips. “You're my wife, now,” he says, not really a whisper but for her ears alone. The intimacy twists her heart. “Let me do for you what I want.”

The protests shrivel up black in her mouth. Maybe once, earlier, before he worked his way in alongside her bones, lived in the breathing space between her veins and tenderly took apart the years-heavy mortar of her defenses.

She doesn't need any of this. She wants it.

Intoxicating, after so little.

“Well,” Will manages, twisting the surrender out so she doesn't seem too eager, “if you...insist.”

His approval burns a path through her. His eyes, so close and dark, searching in the way usually reserved for picking her apart, searching for every nook and cranny, every seam that crawls into her head and drawing them free in a taut line. But there's nothing left to see except her, and it scares her to death and panic and fight-or-flight, but she also couldn't bear it if he stopped looking. She'd die if he did, assuredly.

Won't she be found wanting?

“Sorry I'm not very romantic on our wedding night,” Will says, aching for a soft mattress and the release of darkness.

“No apology necessary. We have plenty of time for that.”

“All the time in the world,” Will manages around a yawn.

Hannibal covers her head with a hand, and the fear rolls trickling off her shoulders, easy as rainwater.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Fear, because it wasn't planned, wasn't meant to be, and an unseen entity changing your body from the inside is so less palpable than a physical creature on its way to breathing.

Fear, to let someone in close enough to hurt you.

Panic, because Will Graham can't be a mother, Will Graham shouldn't be a mother, lack of desire and a broken spirit ( _how can she protect it? how can she teach it morality?_ ) is a timebomb combination, what were they thinking, and of course it's too late, now, it's been far, far too late for a long time.

Elation, because Will Graham is married. Will Graham is having a baby. Will Graham has a family, and within that, the age-old hope for peace.

Hope is such a fragile, precious thing.

Like the soft bones of a newborn.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

On her wedding night, Will does not sleep.

France is quiet. Too quiet. The occasional rumble of a distant car engine, the omnipresent hum of the air conditioning. Regulated breaths hissing, blood pooling to the back of her skull. The toneless drone of ambient noise, plugging up her ears like water the more she listens.

She misses snuffling dogs, clicking claws on wood, attention-seeking whines and the crunch of food between molars. The wind smacking tree limbs against the window, invisible in the dark. A storm’s shrill whistle. Waiting for someone. Something familiar, and grounded.

She thinks too much for silence.

The white sheet, the only covering they'd needed in the warm spring night, pools low on Hannibal's back, exposing the swath of muscled skin to the moonlight. He sleeps light, more a refueled machine than rejuvenated man, so Will keeps her fingers to herself, curls them under her chin to forbid even a gentle, wondering touch.

Will watches the even rise and fall of his spine, eyes still behind closed lids, face limp in repose.

“How did I get here?” she whispers into the pillow.

He doesn't stir.

Biological imperatives demand she move, and Will navigates to the bathroom blindly, palms feeling the walls on each side, small steps on unfamiliar floors. She doesn’t know how many steps and which turns. No sleeping dogs to trip over, either. Alana’s, they’re with Alana. Just her own feet, vision milky in the dark and hands the barest shake under the running tap.

Morning sickness; not enough food; not enough sleep, any number of possibilities. Hannibal provides the second, is helpless to the first and dispenses mercy in tablets. She'll disturb him if she searches through their unpacked duffle bags, but she'll disturb him if she turns and tosses and counts the ceiling grooves for the uncountable time.

It's a bad night.

Somehow, at some time, those became abnormalities.

She's grateful for that, at least.

Hannibal's awake when she creeps through the ajar bedroom door, propped on one arm and sheet baring hints of narrow hips. The white of the bed and the white of his skin make him seem ethereal.

“Dreams?” he asks. Voice a little rusty from disuse, all velvet and thunder and it pulls like meathooks beneath her skin, tugging her back beneath the covers.

“Insomnia,” she answers. “I'd prefer the alternative, honestly.”

Sleep-lidded eyes flickering over her face, Hannibal gently tugs the blanket over her shoulders and passes a hand to smooth out wrinkles. “Would you care to tell me what troubles your mind?” he offers, pressing without demand or insult.

Will would, actually. It could spill from her lips, and he would absorb it, channel it back to her as something nonthreatening and conquerable; pour it molten gold into her palms. But the man is not an endless reservoir; she has made a promise and cannot, will not overburden, refuses to ruin him by proxy.

“Not tonight,” she mumbles. She will not speak but she will neither do him the insult of lying.

He watches her, this man, like she would disappear with a blink. “Do you regret our marriage?”

“No! No. My god, Hannibal.” She finds his left hand in the dark and twines their fingers, stroking the fitted silver band where once was tanned skin. “I'm just restless.” A white lie, to soothe. “It'll pass. And,” she adds with a light laugh, “hungry.”

The fondness in his eyes spreads to a small, imperious smile she recognizes so well. “That is an ailment easily cured,” he says. His palm moves beneath the bed covers to stretch over her stomach, slight and firm but curving larger by degrees every day. He rubs gently, thumb stroking lines. “What does our little one crave?”

“What was it you made last week? With the mussels and fries?”

“ _Moules Marinières_?” Hannibal arches one surprised eyebrow. “Your palate is improving.”

“It’s the baby’s palate. Be proud.” Will smirks, teasing his silver chest hair with her fingers until he rumbles affectionately. “It could be McDonald's drive-through again.”

“I am proud.”

To prove his point, Hannibal leans in for a kiss. Will tips her head at an angle to facilitate and accept in equal measure, discovering her smile mirrored in the shape of his mouth.

“Very proud,” he murmurs, shades deeper than normal, and discussing food really should not send sparks of arousal through to her toes. Hormones.

“Please don't tell me you get off on cuisine. I'll never be able to look at you cooking the same way.”

Hannibal just continues to smile, crinkling the age lines of his eyes and mouth. It's an expression she's seeing less rarely; a very easy, loose affection. God, he's beautiful. “Combining food and lust is a normal practice,” he says without inflection.

“You don't combine your passions. It's messy. Although if you let me, I would lick chocolate ganache off you in a heartbeat.”

“For you, dear Will, I might make an exception.”

With that, Hannibal dips his head for a second kiss, chaste in its brevity, and climbs from bed.

“You don't need to...” Will hastens, only to be silenced by a chastening tut.

“It would be my pleasure,” Hannibal says, knotting a dressing gown at his waist. “For more selfish reasons than to sate your hunger, I’m afraid.”

An old French kitchen. Of course. Undoubtedly he’s been itching to break it in since before they arrived.

Will leans her head back into the pillows, sighing deep in resignation. “You spoil me.”

That pleases him. He casts her another warm, approving smile, hand lingering against her cheek. “You're welcome to join me whenever you're ready.”

She will, eventually. But for now Will lies in bed, listening to the pad of Hannibal's footsteps down the stairs, the creaking of cabinet doors, sizzling meat and the clang of utensils.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“So what you're telling me,” Jack says, enunciating each syllable, “is that two of the smartest people I know had a shotgun wedding.”

If nothing else, marriage announcements are a chance to study human behavior.

Even after they correct him (proposal came first, then the baby, and, well, if the wedding was fast afterward why wait?), Jack congratulates while scolding or scolds while congratulating. The phrases “so this is what you were doing when I sent you to Baltimore,” and “that's a radical new form of therapy, Dr. Lecter,” are bandied about, as well as questions of disbarment and loss of licenses, but once they swear on countless oaths and promises and mother's graves they terminated their doctor-patient relationship before acting like horny teenagers on prom night, he softens as much as the head of the FBI can.

Will knows, somewhere, beneath duty, Jack Crawford cares for her. She knows he cares for Hannibal, the respectful friendship in public and late night confessions in private. He had to have known, observed and fused the pieces. The altered body language, the carefully discreet touches, comfortable eye contact (eye contact, let the professionals marvel) - Hannibal joining her for cases in the middle of the night, Hannibal staying in unspecified hotel rooms and wearing yesterday's clothes, Hannibal's especially keen  _interest_. Will's drifting from the agency, Will's admirably healthier state of mind, Will's guilty blush that's as good as confirmation.

But Jack never spoke a word. Perhaps he hoped he wouldn't have to.

They didn’t have to say a word, either, aside from obligations. Jack found them waiting outside his door. He rounded the corner at the moment Hannibal bowed to steal a kiss.

Now, rooted with the conviction of a preacher in front of Jack’s desk, Hannibal says, “I love Will with all my heart. I intend to devote my life to ensuring her happiness.”

“I didn't plan it,” Will says, her hand trembling within his. He increases his grip enough she can feel it. “But I chose it. In solid mind. I...really do love him,” and the last words are a confessional whisper uttered to none other except Hannibal, because no one else deserved to hear.

On cue, Hannibal presses a kiss to the back of her knuckles while holding her eyes. Part show, part truth, and it warms all her cracks.

So that's over. No laws broken, no egos bruised. Jack even shakes Hannibal's hand, some sort of congratulatory masculine gesture. As perceptive as ever, her husband ( _husband_ ) ducks out to retrieve their coats, stealing the energy of the room with him.

They watch him leave, lean spine and broad shoulders and silken stripes.

“He's good for you,” Jack says, eyes shifted to Will and probing. Less interrogation than normal, more study. As if  _Hannibal and Will_  was one of several equally plausible outcomes.

“I know,” she says. Her hands twisted in her pants pockets, hair braided back, a healthy vigor to her cheeks.

After holding a thought, Jack nods sharply, and it's only a little awkward.

And then there are the lab techs.

“Fucking seriously?” Beverly crows, and when Will shows off her ring finger the other two start yelling.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

In the pre-dawn dark, full of food and warm by his embrace, Will dreams of falling.

Deep and dark as dreams are, an abyss of thought. Tendrils impale her body at strategic points like a memory she should know, but she rests in utmost comfort. The world is black, and she could descend, suspended, mind utterly void, and it would be long-awaited peace.

She dreams of Hannibal, with such clarity. Eyes hovering above, the rest of his face obscured by a surgical mask. Gloved hands wielding a scalpel as artistic as graphite pencil. And he's cutting her open, so precise and gentle it doesn't even hurt, it feels good, so good to be opened wide and exposed instead of hidden and dying in the light.

He reaches both hands into her slick chest cavity. He observes her heart, a living tableau, cradling it as a bird with a broken wing. She can still feel its beat, a phantom limb.

Hannibal locks her heart away, inside a box she cannot see nor remember, and Will does not fear.

Sometimes, she is the one holding the scalpel, carving his chest sloppy, messy, blood congealing on her bare hands, and she lifts his heart of its confines, throbbing, beating, alive, and he stares up at her with an expression of absolute peace, as if he had chosen this, designed this, wanted.

She awakens to retch digested remains of the mussels, curled up shaking against the cold porcelain toilet. Her heart rattles between her eardrums.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, breathing hitched fast, “so, so sorry…”

“Sshh.” Kneeling on the tile floor in his pajamas, Hannibal presses a cool, wet towel to her forehead. “It’s perfectly fine.” When she attempts a more coherent apology, he silences her with such kindness in his voice, she could perfect the stereotypical pregnant image by crying. “This is neither the first nor the last time you’ll lose a meal from a tempestuous immune system.” He kisses her temple. “Welcome to motherhood.”

Will sighs, head dipped over the open toilet. He slowly rubs the back of her neck, thumb pressing bone.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Everyone else of note learns at the dinner party, Hannibal smiling demure to a rapturous crowd. On his arm, she’s fitted to him better than a gold ring; her maroon gown matching the crimson piping in his tie, gray pearls at her throat, his arm curling her waist, her hand clutching his jacket to calm her nerves. They share a sweet non-alcoholic juice, feed each other the exquisite finger foods (“made from real fingers” Hannibal quipped and the crowd roared), graciously accept the dozen (two dozen? more?) faces toasting their happiness.

The women fawn, some envious, some proud as mothers. The men laugh that established bachelor Dr. Lecter has finally been snatched up on a ball and chain.

Will blushes when Hannibal kisses her sweet, a gesture usually shared in privacy. The centers of his eyes glitter. He's drunk on power, the audience devouring his food as ardently as they watch him romance his wife.

(He agreed to a private, no-nonsense exchange of vows, if she allowed an extravagant reception after the honeymoon. His social butterflying pleases him as much as she hates the pressure of too many eyes, so they compromise.)

By night's end Will feels woozy, and for once neither from mental instability nor the four-week-old baby they've kept a deliberate secret.

“I keep expecting to find myself stranded on a beach somewhere, all of this an exceptionally vivid hallucination,” she tells him. One hand holds her stomach, still not showing, while the other grips the back of a chair for support.

All guests dispersed and the last remnants of the kitchen crew tidying up. At last free to do as he wants, Hannibal pads up behind her, making sure she can hear his approach, and brackets Will back to chest with his arms. As simple, banal a motion as that, and the tension in her breastbone uncoils quick as a flicked switch. Will sighs, leans back against him and lets the warmth of his body, the regular pace of his breathing, calm the aftershocks of  _people people eyes noise, how delightfully quaint you are, she doesn’t seem exactly your_ type _, Doctor._

“How can I prove this is real?” he asks quiet as a breath.

Stroked with happiness, Will grins easily, stupidly. His lips fall against her hair, kneading the crown of her head. Slowly, so the lips never leave, she turns on the spot. In these silver heels, slipped on by his hands like some fairy tale (if only the magic would appear in a wisp of light and transform her into someone unbroken), the top of her head reaches his chin.

She hooks her fingers into his belt loops and says, “I can think of a few ways.”

Preening, Hannibal hums lightly while nuzzling behind her ear, right where tiny hairs curl soft as down. She smells like lavender; he loves it especially. He’s been sending her wait-until-later glances the entire night in between playing the charming host. Not, of course, that Will needs encouragement.

“Are you going to illuminate the ways for me,” he asks, tone vibrating with promise, “or shall I guess?”

Will skims her hands to his sides, up the length of his chest to wrap fingers around his tie. A few tentative steps backward toward the table, unsure in these heels, leading him by the fabric around his neck. He follows without a twitch of complaint, and the anticipation makes her lightheaded.

“That depends,” she says, deliberately unloosing the Windsor knot even as she keeps her grip taut, his neck leaning forward at the pressure, “on how good of a guesser you are.”

“Hmm.”

That one satisfied, intrigued sound, a warning lodged in the back of his throat, is enough to melt her bones to liquid. Balance suddenly gone woozy, she steadies herself with both palms flat to his chest. Her back hits the table. Sniffing out weakness like a bloodhound, with one expert shift of muscle Hannibal seizes her in a hungered kiss. While his affections never come with demand of return, he’s waited the night through with exquisite patience. His patience is not endless.

Will uses the weight of her body, feeble as it is, to pull him flush against her. In answer Hannibal lifts and deposits her on the table with no effort at all. He’s tall enough his knee catches the inside of her thigh, nudges her legs apart so he can fit between and Will hooks them around his hips, ankles crossed at the small of his back. Contact accomplished, she tugs free his tie and drops it on the table, plucks open the collar of his shirt even though his jacket and vest are still on. She leans forward in her concentration, breathing fast already. Although it’s hard to concentrate when Hannibal’s burrowing his face in the curtain of her hair.

“Perhaps,” Hannibal murmurs, the most delicate kisses where the curled strands graze her temple, “I should improvise.”

God, that voice. It makes her lips part and her spine curl, even when he isn’t in the room. But he is now - paced, worshipful little brushes of mouth across her jaw, cheeks, gentle enough for her closed eyes, and Will’s breath hitches when a pair of warm hands skim near the hem of her dress. Satin tinted dark as blood, the most ridiculously expensive thing she’s ever worn, so soft she’s barely felt it on her skin tonight, except when she walked and it whispered across her legs and she felt weightless.

“Perhaps,” she says, “you should hurry up.”

To prove her point Will sneaks her hand beneath his jacket and snaps a suspender, playfully. Smirking, Hannibal’s hands smooth underneath that dress, seeking in warm, slow strokes. He’s pleased by what they find, thumbing the black lace at the same time he kisses her throat, just enough suction and hint of teeth to draw out a soft moan. (She’s improved her clothing for him, just as she’s improved her palate, her manners.) Keeping her secure with one palm splayed on her thigh, the other creeps the length of her bare spine, sparking lightning storms in her skin as he goes, to the strap at her right shoulder. It drops easily at pressure, to be replaced by that mouth spreading kisses and Will bites on her bottom lip not to whine.

“That’s not bad,” she says when she’s gathered enough breath to form a sentence. She brushes her nose against his ear. Whispers, “But I was thinking I’d suck your dick until you see stars. After we see how many times you can make me come in one night.”

Hannibal hisses a breath between his teeth. She’s surprised him. The feeling is mutual, her need for him an accustomed habit by now but still a wonder.

It takes him a moment to prepare before the low rumble in his chest becomes words. “Wilhelmina Graham, that is the most deplorable thing anyone has said to me.”

“And yet,” Will declares, moving back enough to catch his eyes, “you're going to do it.”

He ticks one eyebrow and that's all it takes for color to infuse Will cheeks, mind wandering to blindfolds and bound wrists and Hannibal sucking her toes until she's leaving bite marks in her own hand.

To think what she once shunned she craves. Made whole by him, a person actualized.

Hannibal strokes a thumb across her bared shoulder. “Perhaps,” he murmurs. His eyes travel the length of her body, as he weighs the merits of each option, which to indulge first. The engorged whites of her eyes, her cheeks tinged with pink, the dress shoved up to her waist. She doesn’t need her  _special insight_  to know she’s a feast.

Did they know, his guests, how they ate off the same table where their esteemed host planned to fuck his wife?

The thought shivers wicked across her skin. Hannibal’s keen eyes watch its journey into goosebumps. Every muscle lined with intent, he slides his hand from her shoulder to her throat. Curves his fingers around the width of her neck, one at a time. Pushes his palm firm against her trachea, heavy and hot and utterly still, and Will bends from the spine, arcing her chest toward him at the same time her head tilts back. The room goes dark, spins delirious as she closes her eyes, and blood thumps a path to the back of her head. Her breathing fits and starts.

Hannibal begins to squeeze, ever so slight. The ridges of his fingers greet her bones and Will dissolves into small trembles, mouth parted, hair tumbling free from the haphazard pins. She tilts off the table until their hips meet through two layers of clothes, and Will sighs, a smile drifting serene across her face.

The first time this happened during throes of passion, an experiment on Hannibal’s part, Will saw stars and hated herself for it.  _I’m a freak._  Hannibal tenderly, patiently, convinced her otherwise. _There is nothing shameful about pleasure._ She’s never had a partner so open-minded, so pleased to help her discover the nuances of what pleases _her_. To ensure she feels empowered, without harm or pressure. He’d do anything she asked, which includes stopping.

Trusting the very air in her lungs to someone else’s control, she’s never felt more alive.

“Here, then,” Will whispers rough, amazed she can form words. “You’ve wanted to all night. A banquet, spread out for you. Just…”

He squeezes harder. Her planned words bubble up as a soft gasp. Words fail, anyway. Too much feeling to quantify. Her body must speak for itself, and she  _aches_  to be filled. To be well and truly fucked, know how much she’s loved.

Someone clears his throat.

So absorbed in the moment she might as well be deaf, Will jumps. Over Hannibal’s shoulder she spots an impressively red-faced man, one of the kitchen crew by his clothes, hovering at the threshold and refusing to meet her eyes.

Hannibal’s only a few seconds ahead of her in realizing, but it’s enough for him to block the man’s view of her with his back and tug down her dress. He slides the shoulder strap back into place before she’s mentally recovered. In this simple, awkward moment, she’s grateful for him. It’s not a new sensation.

“Excuse me, Dr. Lecter,” the man says, still avoiding eye contact with either of them, “we just need your signature before we leave.”

Hannibal sends a crisp nod. “Of course. One moment, please.”

The man practically runs away.

Now that the immediate embarrassment’s over, Will snorts into Hannibal’s shoulder. “That wasn’t as bad as when Bev caught us in my lecture room. She’s seen more of me than a friend needs to.”

“And me.”

Will rubs his back. “Or when one of your patients doesn’t knock.”

“That’s why I lock the door when you visit my office.”

“Except when you forget to.”

“Except when I forget to.”

Interrupted sex is embarrassing enough, but it’s especially embarrassing when Will’s bent over her husband’s desk. Naked. Somehow she doubts the patient stayed a patient for long after that.

The endorphins fading, Will nudges pointedly between his legs. “You might want to take care of that,” she says, “before you have an adult conversation.”

Hannibal re-buttons his collar with a sigh. Will tucks a palm to the back of his neck and kisses him a gentle promise.

“Don’t take too long,” she warns.

“I have no plans to."

While he seeks out someone for a damn signature, Will crawls into his ( _their_ ) bed. She tries to arrange herself in a sexy way but just feels stupid, so she settles for propping against the pillows. Waiting, she touches her throat and shivers pleasantly with remembrance. Thank god she trusts someone. Thank god.

The first thing Hannibal sees is her covered by a blanket. The next thing are her clothes on the floor, everything except for the pearls.

“Well,” he hums. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

Will points. “You. Strip. Then get over here.”

“How romantic,” he says, even though his shirt’s already coming off.

Not long after, their evening reaches its inevitable trajectory. Predictable, perhaps, they wind up here; remarkable, how the pleasure has grown rather than waned with experience. They taste of each other until they’re sated, then lie skin-to-skin in a bed too large for just one person. She traces the muscles of his torso while his arm drapes across her back, the hold only mildly possessive.

Tree branches scratch against the window, wind rattles the latch, and Will is safe.

Safe is a precious word, a precious feeling, and Hannibal Lecter has always given it freely.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Swathed in a bed of Egyptian cotton, rain lapping on the glass of tall French windows, clouded hazy dawn shafting through the curtains. Quickened heartbeats, a body warm and welcoming and so easily accessible to her. The faded scent of low-burning candles and the musky heaviness of sleep. Scattered birdsong. Hannibal applying a palimpsest of kisses across her bare shoulders, the softest insistence of her attention.

No calls. No responsibilities. Just Hannibal's kisses and the chance to pretend at something she isn't.

(Pretending, after all, is what she does best.)

She begs his mercy: let her sleep, preserve the dream, even though her dreams usually aren't this nice.

His voice slips alongside the moment, doesn't shatter it.

“This isn't a dream, _cara dolce_. You'll never have to dream again.”

Fit to spill sunlight, she turns smiling into his kiss and the unfamiliar metal of a ring presses into her hip.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Weddings announcements, as is turns out, are easy.

Babies are more difficult.

The first trimester allows them time for privacy; they're not ashamed, although a few old-fashioned souls may tut-tut she was officially pregnant before officially married. It's their secret to treasure, when there is so little to hold dear.

But it's tricky to conceal indefinitely when she’s calling her substitute at least twice a week; keeling over when she does make it to class; spending her lunch breaks hunched over the toilet; and, last but not least, quivering from a bone-deep exhaustion entirely different than the kind she’s used to.

It’s infuriating being so helpless to her own body. Held hostage. A vessel.

“From now on, we're using condoms,” she informs Hannibal over dinner after the smell turns her stomach. “Every time.”

Thankfully, however, not the dinner they invite Jack to.

He already knows, of course, and kept their silence. But there's such a thing as mending fences, or at least gluing the fractures, so Hannibal prepares Jack's favorite dish and plies him with wine and charm. Will's not much of a hostess wife, but she steals quick kisses between her  _sous chef_  duties when Jack isn't looking, and sometimes when he is, because it's fine. It's fine.

Near the end of dessert, “So what are you wanting to tell me, Will?”

When Will refuses to answer, Jack’s eyes lift from his plate and pin her against the back wall. Thankfully, they’re lined with an amusement that belies any real threat.

“Really, Graham,” he says in his  _calm the lamb before the slaughter_  voice. “I’m not stupid. Clearly it's not a surprise pregnancy, because we've already dealt with that.” He tips his wine glass in Hannibal’s direction. “Congratulations, by the way,” he adds warmly.

Another older man without a legacy. Time dashed away with his chance.

Hannibal mirrors the toast. Will clenches her jaw down around the bubbling anger. She adjusts her glasses higher for distraction, herself and the men she can’t escape or live without.

“I think it's best...” She pauses to clear a rasp from her throat and finds she can’t go on, sand lodged between her teeth.

When the pause stretches into pain, Hannibal squeezes her hand under the table.

“We think it's best I...take a leave of absence. From field work. At least until the baby is born.”

Jack nods around a mouthful of souffle. “Of course. Maternity leave’s standard protocol. Do you really think I’d risk your baby’s health for a couple less freaks off the street?”

“I didn't say...”

Will trails off.

Jack swallows. “Take care of yourself. Be happy with a man that loves you. I think we can all agree you've earned that much.” He points his dinner knife at Hannibal. “And that man loves you.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could swear Hannibal smirks.

So, really, it could've been worse.

Her leave takes effect almost instantaneously – from one day to the next, her gun and ID are returned. No gruesome details in manilla folders, no phone calls with a location, a body count, and without a warning. She's back to where she was before, the eye of the storm she’d carved out for herself: teaching within a cavernous, echoing room. She'll consult from behind closed doors if needed, but even that’s a fine point. Too much emotional strain isn't good for an already fragile mother.

Her shoulder holster’s a phantom weight.

(Funny, how carrying a minuscule collection of cells makes her not only spun glass, but of higher worth.)

Jack corners her in front of the soda machine as she’s shifting quarters, the craving an itch on her tongue.

“I don't think you planned it,” he says as he draws a wrinkled dollar bill from his pocket. “But that's a decent way to do it.”

 Will blinks tense, puzzled eyes. “I don't like talking in riddles, Jack,” she says quietly. Headaches are practically a daily routine, but this one’s sharper. The baby stabbing ice picks in her skull.

“You wanted to quit the FBI. But you couldn't do it.”

Jack inserts the dollar bill, waits for the can to strike the tray, then bends down to extract with a mild sigh of effort.

“Pretty good way to get around the problem, don't you think?” he says pleasantly.

He pops the top. Soda fizzes onto his lips.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

He takes her to ancient museums and country wineries, cafes on cobblestone and the boarding school where he grew. He teaches her the rhythm and syntax of the language beyond two years of high school classes, and she proves a natural. They share wine crushed fresh from grapes (a small sip won't hurt the baby), and the wind swirls Will's dress, blue and light for the ailing spring, around her calves. They walk bare foot through flowers and dip their toes in lakes. Evening falls and Will could live a hundred lifetimes.

“Now you,” Hannibal whispers, teasing back her hair to kiss the shell of her ear. “You choose,  _mon amour_.”

Will glances down the city streets, vanishing pink into horizon lines.

“Take me dancing,” she says.

In the dimly lit smoke-filled bar, Hannibal weaves through milling bodies toward the crowded floor. Without letting go of her wrist, he faces her with a hand ready for her waist.

“Maybe...” Will waffles. Bites her lip. Offers up an apologetic sigh. “This wasn't such a good idea.”

The smile sits like the fine wine of the vineyards in his eyes. Will wants to taste it on her tongue.

“Let me guide you,” he says, and pulled by words Will steps into his waiting hold.

Perfect skill moves her with the instruments’ rhythm. A slow, easy waltz to a Sinatra melody. Something with energy that necessitates Hannibal roll up his shirt sleeves and Will kick off her shoes. Faster. She sheds technique in favor of adrenaline, and, somewhere in the rush, her inhibitions. Hannibal spins them and Will laughs breathlessly, her hair flying and her skirt sailing.

There are many reasons she married him. Chief among them that when he pushes her, she’s a flower unfolding toward the sun.

As the music reaches crescendo Hannibal drops her into a controlled, swift dip and holds her there. Between the blood rushing to her head and her scrambling gravity, she tingles quite pleasantly.

“Such a Don Juan,” she drawls.

She knows he'll appreciate the reference, and he does, pride crinkling his age lines. He rights her easy as anything, but her mind still spins. She frames her palms against his wide torso for balance.

“A break,” she begs. “Just to catch my breath.”

Hannibal smooths her hair’s wild tangles behind her ears. “Shall I fetch us a drink?”

“Then I'll dance even worse than I already am.”

“I doubt you’re capable of worse.”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?”

She's drowning in the unfettered warmth of his gaze when her attention fractures. An imperative pressure on her elbow and behind, an undeniable male presence. Will flinches at the unknown contact, rotating around and dragging her eyes up to a firm, bearded face wearing a keen expression. Tall, lean, young, younger than her by several good years – about Hannibal's height, but nowhere near the muscle.

“ _May I cut in_?” he asks in French, voice projecting over the din of music and conversation. Will doesn't catch every nuance, but experience translates the glint in his pupils.

Hannibal stiffens. His hands squeeze both her arms and shift her infinitesimally back against him. The emotion is a single drop of ink, but it's apparent in his normally clear glass.

“ _She is spoken for_ ,” he says. Clipped and clear despite his accent thickening vowels.

The Frenchman's eyes shift from Will to Hannibal, then once more to Will, a deliberate mockery. “ _I wasn't asking you, old man_.” He approaches, leans in to ensure Will can hear him, understand, read his lips even as she stares resolute at his jaw. “Just one dance with the beauty?”

Will feels a rumble pass through her spine. Low, constant, heated.

Hannibal is _growling_.

Quick as that, she sees a bar brawl; an idiotic youth broken on the floor, and Hannibal nursing bruises in their room.

The unabashed cockiness of a spoiled pup used to getting what he wants, and the fierceness of a lover overprotective on his best days.

Fast as gravity, she’s exhausted.

Pivoting on her heels, Will slips Hannibal's grasp. The stranger's eyebrows raise hopefully only to just as fast narrow as she sidesteps him toward the bar.

“I'm not interested.” She snaps her hair into a swift bun. “In either of you.” She stomps away, still barefoot, and calls over her shoulder in French, “ _Fucking measure them_.”

It's not until the glass is in her hand and the soda spikes her tongue, cool and tangy and tasting nothing like home, ice cubes diffusing perfect, Will looks back to the dance floor. Hannibal watches shell-shocked, lips thinned in anger, and the Frenchman tosses up his hands and laughs.

By the time her husband joins her at the bar, her anger’s not so much chilled as softened. They came together stained by the same girl’s blood. This, they can hurdle.

Hannibal anchors his weight at her back, his presence settling over her like a shadow across the sun.

“I don’t want to fight on our honeymoon,” she says.

"The feeling is mutual."

“Then let’s not.” Will presses her forehead against the cool glass. Her eyes fog trying to focus on the melting ice cubes. “I know you mean well. But don’t - metaphorically piss on me to mark your fucking territory. You don’t own me.”

Slowly, Will feels Hannibal's breathing even out against her spine.

“I could never dream of doing so,” he says, only loud enough to carry over the din.

She fidgets on the bar stool. An ache pulls her left calf tight. “Do you want to?” she asks, afraid of the answer more than most things.

“Yes,” he admits. “But not in the way you fear. More as flesh houses the skeleton. Inseparably entwined, existence hinged upon the other.”

Will’s chuckle surprises her. She sets her glass on the counter and angles the stool to face him full-on. “Have you ever considered a career as a poet?” she asks, massaging his considerable ego. Leaning forward, she cups his cheek in one palm. “Don't let one idiot spoil the evening. It's been good, yeah?”

She holds the stare, holds, and reaches him. Draws him back out with unhurried, heavy steps, until his lips unfurl into an upward curve.

“I dare say nearly perfect,” he says.

So they stay, until Will falls more in love with him than even before, her hands in his hair, his fingertips gliding ever so delicate over her spine.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Her cell phone rings.

She says, “I'm on my honeymoon, Jack,” and hangs up.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She closes her eyes, and Hannibal’s words are wind passing through the trees she once walked under with her father. His settled heartbeat is the pull of a fish on the hook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back again, hooray! The day before season 3 premieres, but oh, well.
> 
> Chapter 3 will, finally, move on from the honeymoon. Or sadly, if you enjoyed it as much as I (and our couple) did. [Here's](http://photos.tourisme-en-france.com/petitesregions/poitou-charentes/ile-de-re/4_le-port-de-saint-martin-de-re.jpg) the Saint-Martin-de-Ré, by the way, and [this is the closest match to Will's wedding dress.](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/63/da/b1/63dab111b1eb9d7b4abc14657ac2f251.jpg)
> 
> Potential trigger warnings: possessive Hannibal, non-consensual drug use, Will's nightmares, sex sex sex.

_____________________________________________________

 

There is a child.

A field vast with flowers and greens, and the child runs. Faceless, but laughing, barefoot and naked and blonde hair streaming out after.

The dog, now a corpse, bones blackened to ash, keeps pace alongside. _  
_

Will cannot catch them. A step behind, strained fingers left to grasp air.

_Faster, faster._

Leading the child, the feathered stag’s deliberate stride. Wherever it walks, the fields die.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Dinner one: Jack. Check.

Dinner two: Alana. Pending.

Once Will dismisses the curious-eyed students from her afternoon lecture, she ventures on carpet-silenced feet to Alana's office doorway and lingers in the half-shadows.

“You can come out of there, you know,” Alana calls with a look up from her laptop. “I don't bite.” She pauses for emphasis, then shrugs her shoulders. “Unless asked.”

Will laughs under her breath and advances two full steps into the office. Her briefcase knocks against her leg. “Didn't want to disturb you. More than I already do.”

Alana knows it's self-deprecation. She closes her laptop and rises from behind the desk, resplendent in shades of sky-blue. (There’s the crux of Alana Bloom; bringing the light wherever she walks.) “So, how's married life, Mrs. Lecter?”

“It's, ah, it's still Graham. He didn't insist I change it. There would've been some – heightened disagreement otherwise. And hyphenating is painfully tedious. His words.”

Alana props a hip against her desk. “He knows he's marrying a modern woman,” she says with approval. “Your students think you've been replaced by a pod person, you know.”

Will blinks over the rim of her glasses. “I. Don't exactly know how to take that.”

“As a compliment. They didn't know you were capable of smiling.”

“Wait until I'm showing. Their heads may implode.”

Alana smiles, unprompted. Not affected or sympathetic. The more Will sees of the expression, the more it becomes one of her favorite sights.

Alana's mouth opens to speak when a mild female voice calls _Dr. Bloom_? from the doorway. A student, textbook clutched across a thin chest, arms slight in the range uniform sleeves. 

Will moves aside, tucking her gaze to watch the sway of Alana's dress as she passes.

“Be back in a minute,” Alana says. She presses a hand to Will's shoulder. “Don't run away.”

For once, the thought hadn’t already occurred to her.

Will turns her back on the pair and, idle, sets her briefcase on Alana’s desk, out of the way of papers and boat figurines. She migrates to the open window. Alana's view allows a glimpse of the training grounds, up a hill and to the right. Students jog at varying paces with varying success, faces flushed from climbing, rolling, running.

A long-dismissed idea hooks into Will's heart and tugs on the line. She tosses it back.

“So.” Alana's voice behind her shoulder. “You didn't answer my question.”

“Hmm?” Will turns from the window, her mind following half a beat late.

“How's married life, Ms. Graham?”

Heat infuses Will's cheeks. She fidgets with the sailboat’s miniature mast for an excuse to look away. “It's...it's been great.”

“Great?” Alana echoes. The disbelieving tone matches her raised eyebrows.

Will goes redder. She makes a conscious effort to focus on the colors in Alana's dress and how they merge into patterns. “Amazing, actually. I, um.”

Alana's smirking fondly, not unkindly, and that makes it worse. 

“Obviously I was surprised, am surprised. You can...understand the mechanical workings of relationships, but still not know how to...” She shoves her hand ramshackle through her hair, exasperated with herself. “ _Be_ in one.”

“I don’t think anyone knows how regardless of experience. You figure it out as you go along. What matters is if he makes you happy.”

Will fumbles a laugh, absurd and shy. She can’t believe how easy it is to do. “Well…I’d more or less expected to spend my days as a spinster. Still don’t know how it went the other way, honestly.”

“Well, I'd count that as good, wouldn't you? I wanted you to find peace, Will, in whatever way you decided was best for you.”

“I didn’t think I would be this stereotypical.”

Alana shrugs. “Nothing wrong with stereotypes. We’re all primitive beings at our core, needing love and companionship. Someone to ease the blank space of loneliness - put a period mark on our drifting lives.” She leans forward and murmurs conspiratorially, "They taught me to talk like that in grad school."

“It’s all a bunch of chemical reactions.”

“Sure, if you want to be scientific. But that takes the fun out of it.”

“Fun?”

“Those first butterflies of liking someone. Falling in love. Discovering where your feelings take you. What’s the point of living if we’re emotionless bodies?”

Will drums her fingers against the desk. “He wants me to leave the FBI.”

The sidestepping of topic doesn’t seem to bother Alana. She watches assessing. Too assessing; the psychiatrist never truly sleeps, despite quelling efforts on both their parts. Beers, houses, no talks of brainspaces unless necessary. “And you don’t?” she prompts, a careful step into a potential minefield.

Will snorts. “I know this isn't good for me. But I suppose I've…as Hannibal would say, always thrown myself on the sword for others. I’m not used to being selfish.”

“It's not selfish to want a good life, Will. A safe place to fall.”

“With someone you trust.”

Alana gestures gallantly. “Couldn't have said it better myself, and I have the extremely expensive degree.”

Finally, Will lays her palm flat on the desk and stops fidgeting. The itching in her skull makes her ask, “Did you really yell at him about…” She searches, in vain, for better terminology. “Us?”

This time Alana’s smile directs itself inward. “I…might have reacted a little harshly,” she admits, although her tone doesn’t ring embarrassed; certain in her actions, but gladly proven wrong.

“He says you yelled. A lot. You accused him of taking advantage of me while I was in a vulnerable state. Which is most of my state. But he didn't. I made the choice, I wanted...I wanted him. Which you know by now, obviously, but you deserve to hear it from me.” Will palms the back of her neck. “I'm sorry we didn't tell you sooner. We wanted to, it just – happened.”

Hardly ever unsure or lacking an answer, Alana cants her head to the side and draws her bottom lip between her teeth.

“You can say it. Nothing I haven't heard before.”

Alana's anxious affection trickles through the corners of her eyes. “Then I'm going to be honest with you. As honest as I would be with any patient. I was...concerned.” She raises a warding hand. “Not to doubt Hannibal’s integrity, or your ability to decide for yourself. But you both met in a certain capacity, at a certain time – a time that was incredibly volatile for you, and uncertain. And a man like Hannibal is very easy to fall for, especially coupled with the emotional intensity of your shared situation.”

Will focuses on a patch of skin just below Alana's chin and keeps silent. This conversation has been inevitable for some time, and relief arises at its passing rather than anger.

A light sigh vibrates through Alana's body. “I didn't want there to be a power imbalance,” she continues. “Or for him to unintentionally take advantage of you, when you were incapable of fully consenting. Or even realizing what you wanted. I wanted you to make the wisest, best choice for yourself, in the sanest mind. I can't speak as to what passed between you in private. That's your business. But the difference in both of you is palpable. As much as I sound like a cliched romantic comedy, you fit. I think, in time, you're capable of making each other better."

She grips Will's forearm. Will's eyes skirt over her mouth, her cheekbones.

“In short,” Alana says, beaming, “congratulations.”

Good. _Good._ She doesn't want to choose between them, her resting places. They hold both sides of the safety net beneath her tightrope.

“I guess this is a good segue to extend our invitation to dinner,” Will says with a hint of sheepishness.

That night when the doorbell rings and Alana waits on the porch with windblown hair and flushed cheeks, Will is centered, sure, and drunk on a love freely given.

“You deserve endless apologies,” Hannibal says as he ushers Alana inside. “We were unspeakably rude, not telling you sooner.”

He talks of the relationship. We've so many secrets, Will thinks.

But how could Alana dream of protesting when the scenes play out. Man and wife, healthy and happy. Hannibal, unrestrained in emotion. Will, soaking in his every affection.

“To be honest,” Alana says, “I never saw you as the family type. Either of you,” she clarifies.

There's no cue better.

“I can't speak for Will,” Hannibal says, “but it was a matter of finding the right person."

Will threads her fingers through his.

“What he said,” and everyone chuckles, and Will rests her head on Hannibal's shoulder, sleepy from food, heavy from rightness.

 

_____________________________________________________

Always Hannibal assumes two forms when he graces her myriad of consciousness.

One, of the dead, her victim, a thing she knows too well; second, the angel, her savior.

Wingspread wall-to-wall, feathers hooked steel, face terrible to look upon, but he comes bearing a light to break through her fog. A capable touch presses against the dip of her temples, an indistinct voice soothes the cracks rippling up her skull. His wings fold her within, shielding her from all the outside, until nothing matters except the world they built together.

“Will?” His voice echoes back and forth, ear-to-ear. “What do you see?”

Will cranes her neck high to this massive beast. He shimmers, edges blurred against a backdrop of shadow.

“The man I love,” she says.

She slides out his intestines, hand under hand, on a fishing reel.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“So,” Beverly smirks, elbow-deep in a corpse's stomach, “how was the honeymoon phase?”

“Well,” Will says, “I'm pregnant,” and Beverly drops her scalpel into intestines.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Surprisingly, after years of mechanics failing to compensate for a lack of emotional involvement, Will loves sex. Unsurprisingly, Will loves sex with her husband. 

Off the floor against the locked hotel door, feverish from their night of dancing. Impulsive in the cramped airplane bathroom because she wouldn't stop teasing, gripping the tile of the sink as Hannibal presses against her back and meets her eyes in the mirror.

And now, sleepy and lazy with no necessity except to be together. In their unnecessarily massive bed even for honeymoon purposes, she wakes to gentle ripples of pleasure as his precise touch and wandering mouth sketch her into goosebumps. Hazed from sleep, her hand fumbles into his hair. It’s nice; really nice, growing stronger as her mind catches up with her body.

Soft little sighs cue him to continue, just like this, and Hannibal seeks out her pleasure with the unhurried familiarity of old lovers. He finds the growing dampness between her legs and braces her thigh over one shoulder for better access. Indulges in the gentlest first taste and Will’s body bends, spine uncoiling sinuous as a wound spring. Instantly she urges him deeper, her knee hooking over the back of his neck. 

It’s a rehearsing, admiring ritual. Fingers, easing her open. Lips closing down, cheeks hollowing in a careful suck. Hot sparks of pleasure light up the corners of her skull at the same time cold adrenaline strikes her breathless, and what results is a twisting spasm of muscles, a hitched inhale that vaguely resembles his name.

Hannibal pauses in his efforts to lift his gaze.

“Come here,” Will whispers. She reaches for him.

Hannibal goes.

She turns warm beneath him, pulsating softly as he moves with a deep, slow-burn pace, hardly enough exertion to warrant the sweat pooling at the small of his back. There's a dreamy surrealism to it; pleasure for the sake of, prolonged rather than chasing after a cheap, passing high. He mouths the ridges of her bones where marks will bloom, cocoons them together and Will basks uninhibited in the sensations of her own body, gliding hot and heavy beneath her skin like oil. 

Sex is more, with him. Trust. Intimacy. Parting the seams of her flesh so another can enter. Together, they almost share a divinity.

Hannibal will hold her in place, hold her inside, and Will can stay here, right here.

Not even the occasional creaking from the old foreign bedsprings can ruin the atmosphere, although it does bring a smile to her mouth and exasperation to his.

“Don’t stop,” she murmurs above the buzz in her ears. “Don’t you…” She breathes out a moan. “Dare.”

He doesn’t. His laughter rumbles quiet and Will feels it echo at every point their bodies touch. Doesn’t answer, either, silence vast as the ocean. Merely lifts a hand from the back of her thigh, bent up around his waist, to cup her face from temple to collarbone. He thumbs hair from her forehead and watches the fever bloom of her skin, his damp lips parted on a half-smile, shadowed eyes starless dark from beneath his mussed hair.

Will’s never been able to climb into bed without climbing into her partner's skull, but Hannibal makes this easy. His desires spread open like an unrolled canvas, so when she opens her body, her lungs, her heart enough to be hurt, she finds herself at home in her empathy for the first time. Hannibal mirrors her beauty back to her. She sees herself anew through his eyes - the symphony of her sounds, how well she fits to him, consumes him.

Laid before his gaze, he makes her feel sacred. 

A burst of desire builds in her throat and Will draws him close, hand cupping the back of his head, and melts to him like snowflakes to cheeks. She fists his hair, the headboard, anything for purchase as her mind tumbles off into white noise. (She can only let go because she trusts him to carry her back.)

At her reaction, Hannibal’s pace increases just enough to encourage the growing tightness in her stomach, the uptick of her heart. Her hair spread out an ocean on the pillows, throat exposed, breasts heavy, filled by him, and her orgasm blooms warm, a cresting wave bright in the morning. She bites his arm and sucks on the thin skin while her nails leave mementos down his spine. 

The rough groan near her cheek is a single glorious breaking of his silence. Will treasures every sound, every flutter of his eyes that proves him human.

Once they’ve caught their respective breaths, Hannibal, ever the gentleman, slides both arms beneath her back and rotates them, bodies orbiting, Will weak and milky-soft, until she's draped over his chest and tucked beneath the sweep of his arm.  But it’s the knowing peace of the aftermath, delineations of anatomy blurred, that resonates most. When Will, sleepy, but unable to shake free the clinging thought, says, “So how long had you been planning this?”

There's no response except his fingertips grooming her hair's tangles. They still, a tell in and of itself, and the quiet stretches enough Will suspects he's fallen asleep avoiding.

Then, “What if I said from not long after we met?”

Will levels on her elbows to give him undivided attention.

“I never considered the pleasures of a shared life. The comfort and reassurance to be found in a partnership. Until I met you.”

He looks to her with something like reverence and Will dare not breathe.

“You thawed my heart's long winter,” he says, pale lips proudly bruised. Burst capillaries, undignified animal markings. “It was – a profound realization, to find myself needing someone. And the more you shared of yourself, the more I knew you were meant for me. And I for you.”

In the face of such an admission, she chooses her words one at a time. “People aren't meant for each other, Hannibal. You just...get lucky. Coincidence and circumstance.” She props her chin on his chest. “If Alana hadn't recommended you to Jack, we'd never have met. Hell, if I hadn't agreed to take the Hobbs case in the first place.” It's wrong to smile at the irony. What was the saying, something beautiful arising from something horrible?

“Then we are very grateful to coincidence.”

Still smiling, she replaces her chin with her lips. “I remain unconvinced that this isn’t a thought experiment on your part.”

“Why do you doubt me?”

Confusion is unsettling on his face, in his voice.

“Well, I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not very lovable.”

“Clearly, I disagree. I'm a very patient man, for something perfect.”

“You're laying it on thick today. With my accumulated blend of neuroses, insomnia, hallucinations, various social anxieties, and memory loss, yes, I'm _such_ a catch.”

“Your continual self-deprecation is worrisome.”

His calloused hand tip-toeing up the sensitive arch of her neck – the other dipping low between her equally sensitive thighs. Will shivers at the first, hums low at the second, automatically shifting to make room for probing fingers. He thumbs where the remnants of his release have dried, some masculine pride at marking her that shouldn’t make her hot and wet again but does.

“Whatever shall we do about that?” he threatens, dangerously soft.

She hates the look he wears, catches it too often - like her surrender is a foregone conclusion. So she grabs the nearest pillow and aims for his head. Hannibal's too fast, snatching up and tossing away the makeshift weapon. And with that, he pounces, palms flattening her wrists to the mattress, pinning her with his weight as she tries to wiggle free.

“You're not getting laid again for at least an hour,” she says through laughter. "Give me a break.”

“Isn’t that opposite the point of a honeymoon?”

It's some wild thing that watches her faux-twist, not Hannibal. A predator, crouched and flexing. Or perhaps waiting in a tree. His breath skims hot over her throat as he inhales deep, not bothering to hide the scenting (sex and sweat and lingering perfume and whatever else pregnant women smell like). Sated, he exhales through his chest, an obscene noise for him.

“Oh, my dear Will,” he murmurs, “the things I could do to you.”

Despite his palms massaging her wrists, which is thoroughly pleasant, and his mouth kissing and biting and sucking with absurd devotion a spot of skin above her heart, which is thoroughly intoxicating, Will nudges him aside. “Whatever it is, you can do it after I shower. You can join me if you want,” she adds, after a beat, because she does ever so want to please. 

“I do.” Hannibal releases her without irritation, because she only thwarted him for a little while. They have these two weeks.  They have their lives. 

And patience is a virtue highly rewarded.

“Use the sandalwood scented bath oils, if you please,” he says as she stands on legs of glass.

“Hedonist,” she snorts.

Waiting for him under the blistering hot jet stream, Will absently prods the blossoming bruise.

_____________________________________________________

The only person left to tell is arguably the most important. Will has variations of a speech prepared, knows Abigail’s formed an unquantifiable attachment to Hannibal and refuses to intrude further. Navigating her personal boundaries needs deftness, which Will has failed spectacularly at so far. And maybe needs an hour’s drive to Wolf Trap whenever Abigail visits Baltimore.

Will knows when she's not wanted.

She’s glad Abigail’s found someone. Even gladder it’s someone who cares, who was there. In comparison, Will has nothing to offer. 

“I told Abigail about our marriage,” Hannibal says, home from the office, after hanging his coat and kissing her hello.

“You – what? When?”

“This afternoon.”

“And? What did she say?”

“Congratulations, of course. She's very happy for us.”

“Right, I'm sure her surrogate father figure marrying the woman who killed her real one is just peachy.”

“Will – ”

“Did you drop the baby bomb, too?”

His patient, parental smile. It rankles her. “One surprise at a time, don’t you think?”

“The two of us starting a family so soon after she's lost hers is...”

“The way it should be,” Hannibal interrupts. “You must cease living your life dependent upon what others think of it, beloved. Or, should I say,” he adds, his already curved lip arching into a hook, “our life. Which involves Abigail.”

“She doesn't want me in her life. She's made that abundantly clear. And I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want me in my life.”

Will pivots hard to leave - somewhere, the study maybe, aimless and frustrated, and that's when Hannibal captures her by the hips.

“Give her time. Wounds that deep rarely heal fast,” he reassures. “Both of us are guilty of forgetting she's only a teenage girl.”

He trails open lips over her temple; her cheek; the corner of her jaw. Glacier-like, Will loosens, and sighs.

“Don't lie,” she says. “She thinks we're...too close. The _it’s unhealthy to marry your sort-of patient_ school of thought. Maybe we were, are, I don’t know.” A second sigh. “Too late to fix that now.”

Hannibal pats the back of her head the same way he might greet her dogs. “Then we must convince Abigail otherwise.”

_____________________________________________________

The first time she pleads he refuses, the second time she pesters he refuses, and by the third time Will tosses a bottle of sunscreen at his head.

“We are going to the beach,” she says. “I'm going, and you're going with me, you uptight, stuffy, European dandy.”

Lounging at the table near the crumbled remains of breakfast, adorned in a white bathrobe, eyes on his iPad, Hannibal only makes the descriptors apt. 

“While your stubbornness is admirable, it also exceeds sensible limits,” he says without looking up.

He sounds _bored_.

“You took me to the coastline for our honeymoon. The French coastline.” Will yanks her wet hair into a ponytail. “What did you expect?”

“A quiet, romantic excursion with my wife.”

“The beach is romantic. Can be.”

“It’s also crowded, loud, and dirty.”

“Your dinner parties are crowded and loud, but I don’t insist you can’t have them.”

She flashes him her brightest, most unhampered smile, and for good reason. She’s well-slept, well-fed, well-sexed, freshly showered. Married, on her honeymoon, fears and fevers exorcised, and, confronted by the rare sight, the resolve melts from his face by measures until Hannibal sighs a sigh expressing just how irritated he is at the disruption, but just how much he loves her. 

“I suppose this is revenge for the opera, hmm?” Resolved to the matter, he retrieves the sunscreen bottle from the floor and eyes it, intrigued. He values new experiences, at least. “If it pleases you, sweet Will.”

Later, Will burning red in a modest swimsuit and Hannibal tanned and shirtless, Will’s quite pleased.

They do all the things she hardly dared imagine: walking hand-in-hand as the surf laps their feet, swimming in the ocean crests, lounging on the hot sand. Hannibal stretches out parallel to her, elbow propped on an upraised knee as he surveys the scape. Sand patches cling rough to his skin, water traces the outline of muscles, and it demands all of Will's considerable self-control not to lick his biceps in public.

“You're so beautiful,” she murmurs.

It's easy to get lost in the moment. Wan smiles and endless patience instead of corpses, and stags, and a head cloven in two. Will can give such things utterance to him without stammer or blush or fear of rebuke.

“You're like some...mythological god. Too wise and remote for human touch. Capable of commanding or ruining nations in equal measure.” She does touch him, then, tracing a limp finger over a curving shoulder-blade. “Except you're mine.”

“I enjoy your possessive streak,” Hannibal purrs. His tone sparks kaleidoscopes in the root of her spine.

“Then get over here and make it worse,” she challenges.

Propriety and hunger meet somewhere in his cranium, for despite the clutter of people near the patch of beach they've claimed, Hannibal goes into Will's angled, offered body. Her body, not those of strangers, assumes his focus.

Possessiveness goes by ways, after all.

“I dare you,” Will rasps near his ear, “to take me right here on the beach with everyone watching.”

Mouthing her throat, Hannibal growls. “Exhibitionist,” he accuses, too good-natured to be offended.

“Then we’re going back to the room.”

At her insistence Hannibal withdraws to an acceptable distance. The sun halos out behind his head. “You shouldn't over-exert yourself,” he says with absurd calm, given the position they're in. “A new mother needs to rest.”

Despite his words, he slips fingertips beneath her shirt to skim over the surface of her belly, soft and vulnerable and, for now, flat. Her nerve endings sing so loud she swears he could hear, every attention flocking eager to his calloused hand sketching nonsense patterns in her skin – adoring her, adoring the hidden thing inside her, the stomach is a symbol isn't it (food, hunger, consumption, birth). 

“A new mother needs to stay healthy,” she counters, “and fit. Physical activity is paramount.”

She presses her hand to the front of his shorts and is rewarded with a hitch in his mechanical breathing.

“And husbands need to take care of their wives,” she whispers in his ear before dipping her tongue into the whorl.

Hannibal is never one to deny himself a pleasure, regardless the kind.  


_____________________________________________________

 

“A penny for your thoughts.”

Home, after work. A warm bath scented with honey and cinnamon. Will reclines against the tub’s rim, sipping the sweet juice mixture Hannibal concocted for her in place of alcohol. And who, while she unwinds in the watery heat, has taken it upon himself to shave her legs. A finely-tipped razor, his massive hand, exacting lines across her pale skin. 

It’s no social statement; Will’s careless and too consumed with too much else to bother. Hannibal, likewise, doesn’t care, merely wants an excuse to dote.

Will laughs at his quip, a cliche and a play on their history in one. “You’re not that cheap.”

“If you insist,” he says around a close-lipped smirk. “An undisclosed sum for your thoughts.”

“More like hundreds per hour.” Will adjusts her foot against his chest to ease the stretch up her calf muscle. She closes her eyes, levitating on the swell of hot water, cool drink, and the steady motion of Hannibal’s hands. “Do you want to know?"

“I'm afraid I don't catch your meaning.”

“If it's a boy or a girl.”

“In most cases, it's either one or the other.”

“You sound so clinical.”

The razor whispers across her flesh. “Isn't it irrational, to invest feelings for something that hardly qualifies as alive?”

“Of course. It doesn't have a personality or opinions.”

Curiosity, yes, hope, maybe, but she hasn’t felt love as of yet for the mass of growing cells inside her. No rushes of maternal instinct.

“But you're not even slightly interested?" she continues. "Whether we'll raise a Hannibal Jr or Wilhelmina Jr?”

“Our child will have their own unique name, not bear the burden of living up to another's legacy.”

“See, you do care.”

Enough pressure, and Hannibal gives way like ripening fruit. He stills his motions to direct his entire attention to his reply. “Of course I care. But our child’s gender will not affect my investment in it.” He resumes working, blade smooth over her knee. “So in my mind, it matters little.”

“You want to be surprised?”

“That wouldn't be practical. We may not be bowing to blue or pink traditions, but we'll still need to prepare accordingly.”

“You're hopeless.”

“Only for you.”

“Mm. That wasn't your best.”

In response, he gently nicks her calf with the razor. A small trickle of blood swells up to the skin. Will tries to shove her foot in his face, but lightning swift Hannibal captures her ankle and licks the blood clean.

“You,” she says atonal, “are evil.”

“And you,” Hannibal says, layering a feather-soft kiss over the open cut, “are delicious.”

“There's a reason Beverly called you Dracula."

He lowers her leg beneath the water again and cleans the cut with his thumb. “Do you have a preference?” he asks as nonchalant as before.

Will conceals, poorly, with an extended sip of her drink.

“With what I do for a living,” she says, each word a choice, “I think it would be incredibly selfish of me to bring a girl into this world.”  


_____________________________________________________

Eventually, in between lazy sleeping and enthusiastic sex, they need more food. They walk to the nearest collection of shops and buy bread, cheese, pastries and meats and coffee beans. Will hangs on Hannibal's arm and watches his exacting selection process, wonders if it's muscle memory from a teenage past. Back at the cottage they cook a simple _coq au vin_  with  _salad niçoise_ , and before bed they watch the sun sink luminous from the backyard.

It settles over Will like waking up to the spread of the dawn. _Hello, this is the rest of your life._

_____________________________________________________

When thoughts and dreams forbid her sleep, seize her hard as  _rigor mortis_ , Hannibal reads to her in bed. Multilingual and soft, his favorite poetry; Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante's  _La Vita Nuova_. Rhythm and syntax ground her overfilled mind.

“In that book which is my memory, on the first page of the first chapter that is the day I first met you, appear the words: ‘here begins a new life.’”

“I like that one,” she murmurs into his chest, silken pajamas near her lips and amber musk in her nose.

He begins calling her his Beatrice after that, never one for trite meaningless endearments.

And when she hesitantly removes a battered child's copy of  _The Velveteen Rabbit_  from storage, he does not mock.

Always, this is how she will remember him: caught in the moment when he did not mock.

“He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real. And when you are Real, shabbiness doesn't matter.”

She closes her eyes, and Hannibal’s words are wind passing through the trees she once walked under with her father. His settled heartbeat is the pull of a fish on the hook. 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Spur of the moment (seemingly), he drives them to the island of Saint-Martin-de-Ré in La Rochelle, a quaint little harbor with an accompanying town, and takes her sailing. Everything comes back like a forgotten song lyric: the pull of muscle, fresh saltwater in her nose, sand between her toes. They prime the sails and set off from the dock, and once the boat settles into an easy coasting, they lose hours.

For the amount of time they spend out on the water, Will's pretty sure Hannibal just up and bought the boat. 

He hasn't faltered once in technique or walking. He looks...at home. Not born, but chosen. It is devastatingly easy for Will to imagine long days of nothing but this.

“You're disgustingly good at this for someone who claims not to like it,” she says, and thumbs a sheen of sweat from his eyebrow. “Where'd you earn your sea legs?"

“Your tone suggests the belief, despite knowledge of my extensive travels, I've never ventured outside the comforts of my home."

“That you're possibly a fuddy-duddy?” She pokes him with a finger. “An old fart?” Hannibal sends her an amused eyebrow and she shrugs. “You knew what you were marrying.”

Hannibal brushes his thumb over the arc of her dry mouth, cracked in the heat. “Yes, I did.” Sighing, he slides his glance across the calm spring waters. “My uncle took us to the sea often. A moody, reticent teenage boy found it peaceful. Although it will please you to know I spent most of my first sail vomiting into a can.”

“It's a rite of passage.”

“A rather uncouth one.”

A bird flaps overhead, cawing a rhythm. Hannibal pauses to watch its flight.

“I spoke very little in those days. One of my first verbal requests was to join my aunt Murasaki on a trip across the water.”

“You've never told me this.”

“The silence or the sea?”

“Both.”

“I'm telling you now.”

Will thinks of him, angry and small with scraped knees. She wants to ask him a million things.

“I can't imagine you as a child," she muses. "I wish I could have known you then.”

“I was a very different person, Will. You might not have liked me as much.”

“Who says I like you now?”

Hannibal smiles, faint and without direction. “I assumed.”

“You know what Jack says about assuming.”

“I can only imagine.”

"Well, I think I've got a pretty clear idea of you."

"Perhaps I'm worried you won't see me clearly enough."

From the safety of his unending arms, she asks, "Do we have to go back?" 

He must not think she's serious. He rubs her elbow and says, "I have my patients. And you have your dogs."

" _And_ my job. Reducing serial killers into digestible powerpoint profiles to whet the keen minds of students."

"And your job," he concedes. 

Will stares out over the water.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“You're staying home.”

“I feel  _fine_.”

“I wasn't aware there was a new definition of _fine_ that included passing out on my dining room floor."

It wasn't that bad, although unnerving, to stand from the table and moments later find herself crumpled on the floor with no memory of falling. Only blackness. 

“You're dehydrated,” he says now, “and you haven't been eating enough. There will be no more of that.”

“I'm not waking up hundreds of miles away with no idea how I got there. It's not that serious."

“Precisely, and I won't permit it to become serious. Remember, Will, you are responsible for more than your own life now.” He pauses, pointedly. Tea drips from the infuser. “And your behavior affects more people than merely yourself.”

She is thirty-four years old. She is a first-time mother. She isn't exactly at the peak of health, and if something happened...if she lost this unnamed unseen thing, the way Hannibal would look at her – god, could he touch her without regret, without loss, without contamination again?

So Will eats her food and drinks her tea as she's told, apologizes as she knows to. Spats are unavoidable, even brawls, but she never wants them to last long. It weighs sick on her heart when Hannibal's eyes close off and deny her.

“I know you want to take care of me."

“That's what I'm here for," he says, voice a gentle steep. "Will you let me tend you?”

“I guess someone has to. Just...” She swallows. “Please don't treat me like a child.”

It must break something inside her, all of this, babies and fevers and fearful husbands, because after dinner it's impossible to keep her eyes open. Her limbs are numb, heartbeat slow, the tea cup dangling limp in her fingers.

“I think I should...” Tongue thick, words slurred. What was she about to say?

The cup slips from her grasp and shatters on the floor.

She can't move to clean it up.

At the sound Hannibal glances from the sink. His gaze settles prickling, assessing, before he rinses the inside of the kettle under running water.

“My sweet little lamb," he says. "Let me take you to bed.”

The next day the porcelain shards are gone.

 

 _____________________________________________________

 

Their last night of stolen paradise, watching the tide from bed, skin tingling with that pleasant post-coital heaviness, Hannibal gifts her a choker necklace stranded with rubies. His mother's. The stones pour over her fingers, harsh as fire in candlelight. Will holds back her hair as he fastens the clasp, and he presses a kiss to the sensitive nape of her neck to feel her resulting shiver.

“I have something for you, too.”

In the zippered bottom of her suitcase, a wedding dress. Simple, almost plain, chiffon paired with lace sleeves.

“I'm only getting married once. I decided to indulge myself.” Feeling silly and feminine, she offers a full-view twirl. “And I thought – you being you, even though we aren't exactly traditional, you should have this."

Hannibal answers by giving her the kiss of her life.

“You bring to mind Botticelli's Venus,” he murmurs half to himself, “ruby lips and angelic curls.”

If she can call him a benevolent savior god, Will can allow her husband his dramatic tendencies.

"Wouldn't mind seeing that."

“When we visit the  _Uffizi_ , I'll show you.”

Flush with affection, he basks in her, thumbs drawing circles over her cheeks.

“I will show you so much, dear Will. You have no idea how remarkable you are,” and now he speaks fully to her, unavoidably. “How beautiful.”

He holds the stare, and the touch.

“My wife." Testing the taste, feel, flavor, shape of the words in his mouth. " _Mano žmona_."

She keeps the dress on. He does not ruin it. The fusion of two beings, released past mortality into starry darkness, away from this pain planet, ringing harmonic distances away to peace and the promise of rest.

Afterward his thumb rubs circles over her throat as her mind slows to sleep, and she thinks, sees, knows: _I would carve my name into you with my mouth. Mark you, sear you, brand you,_ and the instinct runs so deep Will does not think to be afraid.

 

_____________________________________________________

She makes as little sound as possible, but perhaps sorrow carries a scent.

Hannibal wakes. Slides his hands over her tightly wound body, seeking the cause of her distress, and when he fails, is left with nothing except to clean the tears from her eyes.

“Tell me, Will.”

It’s the way he says her name.

“I don’t want to go home.” The words crowd her throat. “I don’t...can’t go back.”

Warmth seeps from his palms to her cheeks, blood vessels and muscles and a body mass of her nightmares. “Go back to what?”

“The fear. Never knowing if I’m going to fly apart. All the, the death and hopelessness and - ”

Angry, pathetic sobs she can't control, can't see or speak and just wants to lash out, scream like a newborn infant. 

“I’m suffocating. It's never going to stop, murders and corpses and waiting for a call, waiting to see if I lose time, or hallucinate, or I finally...if they lock me away. I can't live like this anymore, never knowing.”

She focuses on the dangling crystal chandelier above their heads, blurred as it is through tears, without her glasses.

“I’m fucked up,” she says. “I’m so fucked up.”

Hannibal's pupils dilate. He seizes her chin and forces her head up hard enough to hurt.

“Look at me, Will," he orders.

Flinching at his voice, she obeys. Whip-crack sharp, no defusing intent or emotion for her comfort.

“I never want to hear those words from your mouth again. Do you understand? You are worthy of life. Don't allow your fears to ruin what we made together. We’ve just begun our journey.”

Her hands, bent at the knuckles, look so small pressed against the width of his naked chest.

“Why do you want me?” she whispers.  She’s engulfed by his shadow, overwhelmed by his presence, driven down into the mattress by the weight of him. 

His look softens, but it's pitiless. He knows how much she detests pity. “Because there is no one like you in this world.”

He seems fit to say more, a long-denied admission. But it passes over them like an osprey's shadow, splintering invisible in the rising light.

“As long as you are with me,” he murmurs, “you will never wake up alone in the dark to that feeling of emptiness in your bones.”

He kisses below the strand of rubies and above her heart.

_____________________________________________________

Out of nausea, exhaustion, aching limbs, and sores, the part she despises most about pregnancy is doctors. It doesn't matter Hannibal chose a birthing center populated by expert staff and warm-colored walls, that the only needles they stick withdraw blood – it's the air, of weakness and medicine and being too close.

All that changes when she hears a heartbeat inside her stomach.

She cries. It's unbearably embarrassing. Irrational and ridiculous, she holds no control over her body even in this.

But with a sound, her world cements. Blood pumping through minuscule developing veins into minuscule developing organs, racing fast and hard as hoofbeats, barely alive yet somehow symbolic of all her futures, will it be boy or girl, who will it take after more, brown or blond hair smooth or curly, tall or slight what color eyes, undoubtedly cheekbones of glass, loves and fears and hopes and hobbies and this is her greatest case, isn't it...to protect and defend and raise and love, for all the ones she couldn't save this metaphorical resurrection –

First, Hannibal wipes her tears with his pocket handkerchief and replaces them with feathered kisses. Then, eyes rapt to the screen, he rests his hands curved over her stomach, head tilted, with all the cautious fascination of an explorer in the uncharted.

_____________________________________________________

Off the plane and on their Baltimore porch, but the dream isn’t over. Hannibal assures that.

“Forgive me,” he says, before scooping her up into a bridal hold. Will squawks in surprise, but he’s already stepping over the threshold. 

“It’s tradition,” he explains, smile sly as sun shards filtering through the clouds. “And I am a keen observer of tradition.”

He carries her like it's nothing, but also as if he's holding the world, and perhaps he is: perhaps this is what she means to him.

"Welcome home, Wilhelmina."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was the beach scene inspired by those commercials featuring Mads on the beach? Yes, yes it was. Consider it my alternative to the swimming pool.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I see a lot. But I’m not strong enough to point that high-powered perception at myself.”
> 
> “Why?”
> 
> “Why?” she mimics, cruelly, crudely. “Why do you think? I’m afraid to.”
> 
> “Have you considered self-perception as a benefit rather than a curse? True knowledge of oneself can lead to peace.”
> 
> “I don’t have that kind of luck.”

Someone knocks.

The half-moon cascades bright through the window and tints the bedroom with a glossy, sea-gray sheen. Hannibal sleeps motionless beside her.

The knocking repeats with the same urgent force. Will floats weightless from the bed, her toes hovering above the floor. She does not wonder at a stranger in her house.

She opens the door to Garrett Jacob Hobbs.

Blood-soaked and bloated skin, he seizes her by the throat and shoves her down, down down to the floor except the floor never comes because she’s submerged in water, the room is an ocean, clogging her throat and plugging her nose and filling her lungs. She tries to fight but grief, terror, _guilt_ heavy her limbs, and he’s too strong, the muscle mass of a thousand vengeful men, holding and holding and _holding_ until her lungs rupture. Bubbles break the surface of the water. 

They’ve never been this close. This close, she can see every mark where her nine bullets pierced him.

“Will.”

She can’t answer. Can’t call for help.

“Will.”

Hobbs watches with hollow eyes as she drowns.

“ _Will_.”

She coughs three times, throat raw with salt.

“Open your eyes,” Hannibal orders, and she does to a familiar face and familiar ceiling. Lights crack at the corners of her eyes and she twitches beneath the steadying pressure of his hands weighing her to the mattress. She must’ve been writhing.

“You were dreaming,” Hannibal says.

_No shit,_ Will tries to answer, then, _I was drowning,_ but if she opens her mouth water will flood within. She will die. She sews her lips shut until she tastes copper. 

“Will,” he says again. He uses the repetition of her name as a balm to ground her, make her present, but Hannibal’s voice is cold as the water. Emotionless, vast, so wrong and unlike him that she spirals free without her tether. Trembles. Chilled, so so cold, every limb succumbed to its own rhythm, sinking beneath the darkest waters where only monstrous sea creatures live, things beyond her imagination. Her eyes flick frantic back and forth across the ceiling grooves, can’t settle, breaths spurt brutal through her open mouth and mist through the air. Her veins are cut to ice.

Panic attack? Seizure?

Hannibal presses his hands to her forehead, the swell of her hip. Bends over until he fills her vision, nowhere and nothing else to look.

“Will,” he whispers. “ _Relax._ ”

She focuses on his eyes, an average dark brown. Nothing special, to all accounts.

She focuses until her reflection rises up in his irises.

The water on her shaking limbs, only sweat. His flesh healthy, not exsanguinated blue. His hands, far from her throat. Not a dead weight hooked to her ankle, but a port’s light in the storm.

She sags. Slowly, without moving, the tension seeps away, wave after shuddering wave.

“Good girl,” Hannibal murmurs. “Now, breathe.”

Will does. 

Once her tremors regulate to normal, or what constitutes as her version of normal, a quick check of her pulse with surgical efficiency. A hand on her forehead to assess her temperature, and, apparently satisfied, it remains there, hotter than a soaked cloth.

“Drowning,” she exhales and doesn’t recognize her own voice. “Was…” Her teeth chatter. “Drowning.”

Hannibal sweeps his thumb across her temple and stays with her, steady and unimposing.

As soon as her numb fingers can fumble a grip she’s tearing off her sweat-soaked clothes, can’t get free fast enough to bare her skin to the set temperature of seventy-two degrees. Hannibal leaves only to return with four towels from the bathroom. He encases her firm, one on the mattress to absorb and the other to cover, the rest held in reserve, and as soon as he’s finished Will rolls to her side - draws up her knees - pushes herself in, small and tight as a body allows.

“Sorry. I’ll change the sheets...”

“No.” 

Hannibal’s a miraculous combination of kind and inarguable in one word. 

Will clings to the familiar sensation of cotton fibers to carry her through the aftershocks as he starts the bedroom fireplace on a warm night and brews a cup of foul-smelling and equally foul-tasting tea, but purportedly filled with medicinals. She drinks to the dregs.

“Why drowning?” she wonders aloud, a test of her pithy voice’s capabilities as much as anything. She palms the bedside table for her glasses without looking, a physical task to focus her concentration.

“Perhaps the baby.” Hannibal folds her sweat-soaked clothes into a neat pile. “The sound of the ocean soothes newborns because it reminds them of their mother’s womb. A vast, warm, swirling place.”

Her foggy vision snaps into sharpness. “I’ll go with swirling. Not so much the rest.”

Objective achieved, Will circles both hands around the cooling mug to steal every bit of warmth left. She sifts through a mental catalogue of images for a hidden answer, fast as powerpoint slides, then slower. Devil’s in the details. Might as well try her old hand at jabbing the pieces together, because her memories of the dream aren’t fading with consciousness.

Fantastic. Yet more horrors burned onto the back of her eyelids.

Hannibal deposits her clothes in the laundry hamper. (Will’s hamper, a plastic bin with a step open she bought at Wal-Mart.) “What else did you see?” he asks.

As if prompted, the corner stirs. Will does not look over. She doesn’t need to. The shadows twine and gather, and the stag forms shape. It passes into her line of sight. It pauses behind Hannibal, tilts its head in grotesque mockery of his concern.

Its eyes are his eyes. Brown, unremarkable, sliced contusions shining out from feathers.

“Nothing.” Will wets her lips, like the very act of speaking, and acknowledging the thing that stalked her, would make it tangible. “Just something in my head.”

Hannibal pushes his tongue against the back of his teeth. Gaze snapping down, he wipes a spot of dust off the dresser with his index finger.

“I’d like you to think about your answer, Will,” he says without looking, “and try again.”

She bristles at the demand. “I thought you weren’t my therapist anymore.”

“I wouldn’t dare psychoanalyze without permission.”

“Then stop asking me questions.”

“I ask as a concerned husband, not a psychiatrist.”

Something rumbles. The stag. The ground itself seems to shake, or perhaps just Will’s body in response. An alien sound that somehow, still, pierces her recognition. It sniffs at Hannibal’s sleep-mussed hair, the silk of his pajamas. Snorting out a breath, it lies on the carpet and upturns its head to watch her.

Will looks at the ceiling.

“I still see...him.”

Hannibal nods. Suspicion confirmed. “Garrett Jacob Hobbs.”

“Not like I used to. It's only when I’m asleep. But he – he held me as I drowned.”

“If water represents childbirth, then you may be associating your imminent parenthood with Hobbs. He was a father who ruined his daughter's life. You fear a failure in raising your own child. It overwhelms you, much like the power of the sea in which you find solace. Even that has turned against you.”

Will casts her eyes down to the towels, a cool turquoise, without crossing the stag’s eyeline. She bites her knuckle, hard enough to feel the sting reverberate to the small of her back. “I see a lot. But I’m not strong enough to point that high-powered perception at myself.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she mimics, cruelly, crudely. “Why do you think? I’m afraid to.”

“Have you considered self-perception as a benefit rather than a curse? True knowledge of oneself can lead to peace.”

“I don’t have that kind of luck.”

“You are not a monster, Will. The beasts you fear only exist in fairy tales.”

“Yeah, but I’m the girl lost in the woods.”

As a reward for her cooperation, Hannibal returns to bed and rests a kiss on her forehead. “We’re having a child,” he etches into her skin with lips and hint of incisors. “You must come to accept that.”

Will softens against his mixture of brutal honest and infinite tenderness. “That’s not the problem,” she insists without heat. “Our baby’s the size of a blueberry, and it’s generating a hundred new brain cells a minute. It’s developing kidneys. Arm joints. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“What any parent does - try. Learn and grow with them.”

That amuses her. She manages a shadow of a smirk. “You sound pretty experienced for a reformed bachelor.”

His lips thin. She catches it instantly.

“I smell that bad?” She mimes sniffing her shirt. “Sorry. Blame the sweat.”

After years of investigative questioning she’s learned a roundabout prod tends to yield results. Even with a psychiatrist.

Not meeting her eyes, Hannibal fluffs the piled pillows behind his head. “I was responsible for someone who was not my child, but like one to me.”

Will’s world shifts off its axis, just slightly. She can’t imagine, he’s first and always preserved in amber as he is, before she reminds herself he’s lived half a lifetime without her.

“Who?”

No roundabouts.

Hannibal sighs. He closes his eyes, and even though he’s present, a derelict part of him slips beyond her grasp. “It was a long time ago,” he says, but none of said time weighs the statement. It rings...hollow.

Subject closed.

Will looks at this man, nearing fifty with gray in his hair. She aches for him, acutely and directly as a needle. She curves her body so they mirror, inches forward with her hips until they brush careful against his midsection.

Hannibal’s eyes snap open. Pupils widen, thin, and lock onto her, an ever-alert serpent.

She needs motion. She needs stimulus. Tension, distraction, adrenaline pooling hot. She brushes her nose against yesterday’s unshaven stubble. When he doesn’t pull away, she kisses him, warm and dry, and Hannibal's mouth opens to her, the unthinking response of action made habit. Will drinks down his chapped lips, a taste too complex to be a dream. His tongue curls out slowly and secures her at the top of her mouth with a gentle suck. His hand comes to rest on her hip, and she's tethered, no floating balloon snapping with the wind but a boat blocked by monoliths.

She tests the extent of his interest, fingers roaming his sternum, teeth nipping at his chin, and Hannibal responds by holding her chin in place with thumb and forefinger and a thorough, probing kiss. It's so simple and so desperately erotic that tension settles between them like a cooled, forged wire. She's got a knee thrown over his leg before she realizes it, desperate for any sort of friction and all it would take is removing the towel. Contact is vital vital need need _need_. 

“Can you...” she breathes unfinished, and Hannibal can, as he circles an arm above her head and shifts her onto her back. Ever delicate, his hand peels back the already damp towel, so much sweat and not all from fear – ladders down to stroke his thumb, just his thumb, over the ridge of her hipbone and it leaves her panting, a feral, desperate pressure.

Hannibal's smile is a knife in the dark.

“Shall I help you forget the nightmares?” he murmurs.

She has legs, when he reminds her. He finds her wet and warm, the only part of her heated, gently pries her apart enough to claim a grip, and Hannibal works her, steady and assured. The tender ministrations pin her to reality as much as to him, make her ache with awareness and she couldn't possibly drift away if she tried. Instead, she unravels; relinquishes her grip on time; only the piercing, building heat. The whole of her body pulses with a singular rhythm, her head, her heart, her cunt.

“Please,” she whispers, all emotion and no shame, “please, please, I need…”

The pad of his thumb is rough from a scar, and with one aptly-timed brush Will falls apart. She twists up all around him, breathes his name into his open mouth.

He murmurs hers back, a called echo across the darkness.

“Thank you,” she manages, once she’s recalled the use of language.

“My pleasure.” 

Will laughs. Pants it out as a faint, exasperated breath, but she laughs a one-note chord and smiles.

It’s a tired phrase, but somehow a legitimate twinkle brightens his sharp, old eyes. He stands long enough to tidy the sheets, clean his hands, and snap off the table light. When he returns to bed, Will paws sloppy at his hip.

“Your turn.”

“That's not necessary.”

“Uh, yeah it is.”

She wants to soothe his heart, empty him except for the hum of pleasure; impart even a modicum of what he gives her. Awkwardly she searches out her goal, and in typical Hannibal fashion he doesn't react with even a twitch.

“Don't you...” Still a little fuzzy from endorphins, she wets her dry lips. “Want?”

“Perhaps later,” he excuses gracefully. He lifts her wrist and bestows a kiss on the map of her veins. “This was for you.”

Will grumbles out her protests, but they are weak things. She’s desperate to slip back into his darkness, a darkness opposite of unknown.

“You're far better than towels,” she says, aware of how ridiculous it sounds, but it earns her a lulling chuckle.

“I’m happy to be of service.”

“One of these days, you won't need to take care of me so much. If I live that long.”

“You will, if I have anything to say about it.”

Hannibal runs his thumb across the length of Will's spine. Eventually the passes slow as he drifts into his own needed sleep.

Will watches him for a long time, counting the rhythm of his breathing like the hands of a clock.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Before work, she gathers her gear and drives to the water. Last night’s rain coats Shiloh, Virginia with an aura of the unearthly. A quick glance at the weather guarantees it’ll remain this way well into nightfall, although the sun will emerge all the stronger from the storm.

The lake glistens beneath a crystal shimmer this early, a misty pink hue. Dew sparkles crystal, pleasantly wet to her fingerpads. In a few weeks the grass will be idyllic, perfect green. 

The fishing line Hannibal purchased for her birthday, although packed, remains untouched. Her systems gravitate to her old faithful rod and line, the tried and true. Her boots squelch in the muddy bank because she’s going to fish upright, dammit, the way Dad taught her, none of this don’t stand too much rule of pregnancy thumb.

The flies, intrigued by her Chanel perfume (also a gift), hiss in circles. The occasional greedy mosquito imparts a mark before she swats it away. As the sun rises in height and intensity, a sweeping warmth over her skin like Hannibal’s kisses, she squints and lowers the brim of her hat. A cramp flourishes up her left arm. 

Nothing’s biting yet.

She feels the beginnings of a burn on her nose and nape. Will adjusts her stance. Her boots squelch in the muddy bay, and she sinks. Closes her eyes and sinks into the cool undertow, letting the current dictate her way.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

A different dream, a different night, in that nebulous period before waking.

Garrett Jacob Hobbs standing over a crib, pointing to a darkened bundle inside and whispering “See? _See?_ ”

A stillborn, eyes red and skin black as tar.

She changes the sheets and doesn’t tell Hannibal.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“Morning. You look terrible.” Beverly tweezes a near-invisible strand of hair off a headless corpse. “Dr. Lecter not putting out?”

From the stool nearby Alana coughs, at the same time she tries to discreetly close the manilla folder in her lap. Will catches a glimpse of a severed body part next to a yellow evidence card nonetheless.

She sidesteps both topics. “Baby stuff,” she lies. She shoves her glasses higher to block her telltale eyes and drains a hefty swallow of the coffee. It’s shit as always, even drowned in cream and sugar. “You rang?”

Alana spins the stool with her foot to face Will one-on-one. Will’s warning bells sound.

“Before I tell you what I’m about to,” Alana says in her best therapist tone, the one she tries to avoid using on Will for multiple reasons, “please remember your personal gun is for protective use only and not allowed on Quantico premises.”

Beverly smirks over her bagged sample.

“Um.” Will clears her throat. “Gotta say I don’t like the sound of that.”

Alana folds her hands atop the folder. “Because of your leave of absence from the field, the BSU’s brought on a handful of consultants. One of them is Frederick Chilton.”

Will’s gut plummets. She grips the plastic white coffee cup harder. “Oh.”

Alana’s eyes wrinkle with deeper sympathy than she can professionally reveal. “I advised Jack against it. He admitted there are better candidates than Dr. Chilton, but none as easily accessible. Or...as willing.”

The coffee wants to come back up. Thankfully, it stalls in her throat, but the aftertaste stains her mouth. “I can imagine.”

“There shouldn’t be any reason for your paths to cross, but I thought I’d…”

“Stage an intervention?” Will interrupts.

Alana’s pause serves as a silent remonstration. “Before you bump into him in the hallway,” she assures.

Will finishes her coffee and crunches the cup in her hand, then regrets it from the startled look it creates from both parties. Too much ferocity. She loosens her stance, cushions her next words with malleable softness. “I’m a professional. Everyone seems to forget that. I can handle myself around a cheap sleaze.”

“I have no doubt about that.” Alana spreads her hands. “Just an emotional heads up.”

“Yeah.” Will prods the thought until it crawls, and nods. “I...I appreciate that. Thanks.”

She’s trying to do better at this, with Hannibal as practice - _please, thank you, good morning._ Simple pleasantries, expressing.

Off Alana’s pleased smile, Will eyes the headless body. “What happened to Sleepy Hollow here?”

Beverly strips off and disposes of her gloves. “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching kids?” she redirects.

“Cut down my number of classes a day. I nap in between.”

“Good plan.” 

“Not my idea. Blame the embryo.”

Beverly shrugs off her lab coat. “So, do you miss us yet?”

Will aims her crushed cup for the trash before answering. The plastic bounces off the rim before hitting the floor.

“Still deciding,” she says.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

After tossing back a fish large enough for dinner, Will returns home semi-tanned and appropriately sore. At the first rolls of hunger she picks at the breakfast left waiting, showers, and rummages out clean slacks and a Hannibal-pressed blouse from the closet. 

She scratches at the skin beneath her wedding ring for most of the day, lectures and idle hours, even though Hannibal and common sense both told her not. The rash itches, and it’s a mindless motion.

She leaves early because she can. The freedom of set hours is intoxicating, especially on the highway as NPR drones through the car speakers.

She switches the station to classic rock when they mention local murders.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“If I'm going to feel awful until the second trimester, I need a place to rest. The other teachers aren’t exactly wild about me napping in the break room.”

Hannibal’s lips part as he blows restrained on his obscenely expensive, incredibly hot cafe coffee. “Then we'll buy you a couch.”

She slides the sugar bowl across the counter. “Just like that. We'll buy a couch.”

He inclines one eyebrow while innocently plucking a single sugar cube. If sugar can be plucked innocently.

Will leans back against the leather-backed chair. “Must be nice to have everything you want."

It's not jealousy. Will purchased a chunk of Virginia land on a Quantico teacher’s salary with enough left over for creature comforts. It's the respondent itch down her neck whenever Hannibal flexes his privilege.

“I won't deny my propensity to extravagance,” he says, punctuated by three light circles with his spoon, “but I was raised without the finer things, and learned to appreciate them from afar. I refused to deny myself life's pleasures once I had the means to procure them.”

Will echoes the words back to herself until they process. “Without?” she asks out loud.

Hannibal sets the spoon on the plate. China clinks softly in the white noise of customers and brewing machines.

“For centuries the Lecter name was associated with wealth and prestige. After the Soviet invasion, we had nothing to our legacy except my ancestors’ ancient home, barely held together with bricks and mortar. My parents bled for every meal. Money was a thing to save, and there was never enough for aching bellies. After a time, we lost the home as well. Instead of lands and inheritance, I was heir to smoke and blackened trees.”

A pause to sip the coffee, make her hang on the formations of his mouth.

“You know about the death of my parents,” he says with remarkable dispassion. “It was hardly surprising, given the circumstances.”

Will’s mouth reeks of sandpaper. She generates enough saliva to swallow. “How old were you? When they died?”

“Twelve. Five years in a Soviet orphanage, before I found my uncle.”

She wears his mother’s ring on her finger and lives in his home, but details concerning her mercurial husband are limited to what’s found on a background check. Will’s never thought much of it, honestly. His opaque personality leaves little need for curiosity (isn’t that what she’s good at, filling in the blanks?), and what matters is sitting across from her in a Baltimore coffee shop.

A caring, urbane, quiet man, passionate about psychiatry, the arts, and her. 

Hannibal knows her past with all the intimacy of a roadmap, but she’s memorized nothing except the surface of his heart.

Shame clogs her chest. She stares down at the old-fashioned wood table and pulls at a loose weave in her scarf. “I'm an asshole,” she mutters.

The best apology she can muster when caught off guard in that spectacular way he manages and she has yet to master defense against, but Hannibal offers a forgiving smile. “You can hardly be at fault at things you don't know.” He covers her hand with his palm, index and forefinger splayed over her wrist. “You haven't touched your coffee.”

On cue Will samples the tart, cinnamon-spiced beverage, still hot enough to scald the roof of her mouth. She twists a face at the burn. “Still. Open mouth, insert foot. Will Graham strikes again.”

“My intention is to help you understand the life I've chosen to lead.” Hannibal angles his thumb to stroke her wedding ring. A smirk flutters wingless in his eyes. “I make wise investments.”

“Like a thousand dollar coffee press?”

“Perhaps one of my more extreme indulgences.”

“Not to mention the gowns and jewelry I don't need, and the fishing rod too expensive to actually use.” She does plan on breaking in the latter when she finally bullies him into a fishing trip. He'd be offended otherwise.

Hannibal says, simple as anything, “You are a masterpiece. Let me treat you like one.”

Will drinks to cover her flush. She sets her cup down with an unsatisfying clang. “You're crazier than I am.” 

Satisfaction lines his face. It seems impossible that accident and circumstance shaped him.  Nothing about Hannibal seems accidental; he was designed with great care.

“Then let me buy you a couch,” he says. “I insist.”

“I don't need it.”

“A duvet would be ideal once the pregnancy progresses. Far preferable to that rickety chair, or standing for hours.”

“Have you ever seen a professor teach from a sofa? Even a pregnant one?”

“You can be the first.” Hannibal sips his coffee with a frown more for propriety's sake than genuine dislike. “For such a high-scale shop, this is rather bland.”

“I'm sure you could do better in your thousand dollar press.”

“I'm sure I could.”

Conversation finished from his perspective, Hannibal rises and pulls back her chair. “There's an excellent outlet not far outside the city limits. Are you up for a drive?”

“So long as I’m not driving.” She takes a longer drink before standing.

It might be fun, bouncing on furniture like obnoxious newlyweds. Maybe she can talk him into one of those automatic lift beds.

Belated, Will realizes Hannibal's studying her. Her mouth, to be precise. “Hmm?”

Hannibal slides his thumb across Will's top lip. It comes away with a touch of white foam.

“Oh. Thanks.”

Hannibal surrenders a distant smile, warmth at the eyes and little else. Then, freshly clean, presses his thumb over the length of her mouth and kisses her around it.

“You taste like cinnamon,” he murmurs, breath a heatwave in the mild air.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

She finishes her last lecture of the day and endures the questions from lingering students. She prefers to view them as roll call names disconnected from the ascending rows of faceless dots (she hasn’t called roll since her first week on the job), but the last one, nearly as tall as Hannibal and confident in it, introduced herself the first semester day. Hard worker, staunch footing, never misses an extra credit assignment. Something Hartner. Hamilton.

She was nice. Thanked Will for making the Bureau less of a boy’s club. 

“Professor,” she greets like Will’s a navy captain. Already practicing her mixture of professionalism and deference in the dorm room mirror. “I’d like to discuss my final dissertation topic with you, when you’re free.”

Will gathers her notes. _Forward, aren’t you?_ bubbles on her tongue, but she remembers from previous interactions this one doesn’t take sarcasm well. Too thin-skinned still beneath the obstinate appearance. It’s not as if Will understands that rock and hard place, or anything.

“I take it you already have a topic in mind.”

The girl nods. “The Chesapeake Ripper.”

Will snaps her briefcase shut with more force than necessary. If it startles the student, she doesn’t let on.

“That won’t be easy.”

“No, ma’am.”

“You won’t receive special treatment or commendation.”

“Understood.”

Will raises eyes to her cheekbone. It’s dotted with freckles. _Come on, Jo,_ another student calls from the doorway, and it clicks. _Josephine Harris._

“I’ll post times on my door by the end of the week,” Will says.

“Thank you, professor.”

Will dismisses her with an uncomfortable nod. Jo rejoins her friend, likely roommate by the way they fall into an unthinking rhythm.

When the maelstrom of passing chatter fades down the hallway, Will lowers into her chair. She’s restless. Teeming. She extracts her half-empty water bottle from the cubbyhole under the desk and drains the room temperature remnants down her dry throat.

Her phone buzzes in her back pocket. Hannibal, calling to share dinner plans. 

Will lets it go to voicemail.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Home before him, his last appointment scheduled for late evening, Will herds the dogs into the back of the SUV. She takes them on a run through the closest open field, keeps at an easy jog and lets them stream out past her. She loses time in the pleasant way by tossing a worn rubber ball back and forth.

She times her re-arrival in Baltimore to coincide with the butterfly-like rumblings in her stomach. She has an appetite, these days.

Hannibal opens the door before she reaches the porch steps. “Enjoy yourself?” he asks, and drops a light kiss to the crusting sunburnt skin of her nose. 

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

It doesn’t take Chilton long to find her.

The classrooms are a brisk walk away from the main offices, schedules are posted online. She’s only surprised he exerted patience past the first week.

The mid-morning lecture wraps. The powerpoint snaps off, the hall lights lift, and Will blinks into focus an unfamiliar shadow leaning in the doorway. As the students file out it straightens its tie, descends the path to the front, and begins to applaud.

Will winces. 

The departing students’ eyes are drawn to him, then her, the object of his approval. Each one is a thousand prickling spiders. He did this on purpose.

“Splendid analysis, Ms. Graham,” he greets loud enough for everyone to hear. “Or is it Mrs. Lecter, now?”

“Graham will do,” she answers coolly.

He thinks his smile winsome. It makes Will queasy. Everything about him turns her stomach, from the knock-off polyester suit purchased on a comfortable if unglamorous salary to the oily smell of his overpriced, overly-applied hairgel. 

“It’s a shame they have you locked up in here in the doldrums,” he says, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Although I can’t say any of us were surprised you proved too…shall we say, delicate, for field work.”

Will’s bristles rise to thorns. _Any of us_ \- can’t let her forget she’s the psychiatric community’s favorite topic. Chilton must boast of his tenuous connection with her at every opportunity. ( _She isn’t that impressive in the flesh. Disappointing, actually._ )

Will gathers her papers and bulwarks herself behind her desk. “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Chilton?” she asks toneless, leaving off his doctorate moniker. She remembers the degree plaques proudly decorating his beige office walls.

“You promised to visit. Allow me a little peek inside that fascinating brain of yours. There's so much we could talk about, especially since your time has freed up.”

Will slams her briefcase closed. “I have plans tonight.”

Chilton’s smile cools but does not fade. “Of course,” he demurs. He approaches her desk and trails fingers across the wood. “Perhaps some other time, then? I’ll admit my hospital isn’t the most relaxing place. There are several superb restaurants in the Baltimore area, if you have the right guide.”

Even if she weren’t in a committed relationship for the first time in her life, Chilton is her last choice of partner. He reeks inferiority from every orifice and scrambles to conceal it with those off-brand suits and expensive-looking watches, the framed degrees and impressive words that play at formidable intelligence. She’s seen too many of his bureaucratic type. The ones who want to fuck her for her special brain.

He does not, in any way, match Hannibal, despite his exhaustive attempts.

She chews the words around in her mouth and spits them out. Fuck professionalism. “I’m _married_ , Mr. Chilton.”

“Oh, no, no, nothing like that. I wouldn’t dream of overstepping my boundaries.” _Hah_. “How is Hannibal, by the way?”

So formal, even between colleagues. Will doubts Hannibal returns the sentiment. “Fine, thank you. If you’ll excuse me.”

She cuts Chilton a wide berth as she orbits out from behind her desk, but he follows on her heels with the tenacity of a dog shaking an especially worn chew toy.

“If I may be so bold,” he says in his most coaxing tone, the one he must use with his difficult patients and all other women, “marriage suits you. You have that pregnant glow.”

Will’s brought up short. She halts long enough to peer sharp over her shoulder and regrets it instantly, as her surprise twists his face into goading pleasure.

“Oh, yes. You and the good doctor are the talk of the town, so to speak. They won’t say it to his face, but knocking up a patient isn’t the most professional behavior.”

It takes most of Will’s self-control not to crush his face with her briefcase.

He keeps stride just behind her in the hallway bustling with activity as students travel to and from duties. Will tucks her head down, shoulders bunched, chest tight, hair shielding her face, sneakers stomping as fast as her short legs can initiate evasive maneuvers. 

“Perhaps both of you could join me for dinner?” Chilton presses. “A little couples’ therapy? Not that you need any.”

Her bones rattle loose beneath her skin. “I’m quite busy right now, Mr. Chilton.” She’s not needed anywhere. She just needs to _leave_.

At last, her rudeness earns a tight sneer. “Doctor,” he corrects. “Seems I’ve caught you at a bad time. You know where to find me if you change your mind. Oh, and do give my regards to Hannibal.”

His polished shoes snap away into silence.

Will veers into the nearest women’s bathroom and vomits in the sink.

Breakfast was half a piece of toast and two cups of coffee, and it all comes up, followed by a brief period of dry heaving. Will hurriedly cleans the mess and splashes cold water on her face. When no one walks in, she peels off her glasses and presses her fist into her forehead, half her weight held up by the counter. Sweat dampens her forehead. Water trickles down the shell of her ear.

This isn’t normal. Chilton grates, but he isn’t a bad itch she scratches raw.

She shoves her glasses on again and calls her substitute. Late notice, but that’s what subs are for. 

Out of nowhere Beverly pounces as Will’s hurrying to the parking lot. “Hey,” Beverly says, and falls into pace alongside with a comfortable ease Will draws strength from. The scent of her leather jacket fills Will’s nose. “Heard a certain head of Baltimore’s psych ward made an ass of himself in your class.”

Mood running rampant with Chilton’s echoes, Will keeps her head down. “How’d you hear that?” Her words slur a bit.

“Trainees gossip. There’s a great hole in the wall bar about fifteen from here - want to join?”

“Can’t drink till November, remember?”

“I’ll drink. You can be my alcohol-free copilot. Appetizers are half priced from now till midnight.”

Will’s knee-jerk smile is concealed by her hair. “I told Hannibal I was on my way.” Belated she adds a rushed but sincere, “Sorry.”

Beverly shrugs. “Whatever. The offer stands.”

Her warmth always surprises Will. A gaze void of wanting, the simple extension of friendship between women who deal in death for their living. (Because that’s what they are now, aren’t they, technically? Friends? More than coworkers, surely. Will’s not experienced enough in lasting relationships to know.) A company-legendary freak trampling over Beverly’s assigned cases on a regular basis, who growls when pressed and speaks less, prone to dazed glances and mumblings and with a bullet-mutilated man under her belt. Beverly’s unfazed.

A sensory recall floats to the surface - the crack of gunfire behind Will’s back. The pop in her ears, her knees on hard concrete and the kidnapper of those lost boys motionless on the ground. The child saved, the villain defeated. Will’s heart, still beating.

She hovers between the memory and present, almost as if she’d snapped her pendulum, one foot in and one foot out of body. “The most stable elements appear in the middle of the period table,” she murmurs. “Roughly between iron and silver.”

Beverly arches her eyebrows like Will turned purple on the spot. Will scrambles, clarifying, “I have a craving. A craving for nachos. Let me text Hannibal. Tell him I’ll be late.”

Beverly hasn’t smiled with such teeth since she stumbled upon Will glassy-eyed and daydreaming in Duluth. “Look at you, defying expectations.”

“I’ve been told I excel at that.”

As she digs her phone from her bag, Beverly peers over her shoulder. “Help me win a bet. Does he text grammatically correct?”

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Quantico’s buzzing like drones in honey season and there can only be one reason.

Dread fills Will’s gut. She loses her place in the slideshow more than once and rubs her eyes raw and wet until her vision blurs. She refills her water bottle from the fountain down the hall four different times.

Noon passes. One. Four o’clock. Nothing.

Could she dare hope? Could she dare be _offended_?

Neither, it turns out, as Jack descends on her empty classroom with all the warmth of a waiting storm cloud. Will’s pencilling down ideas for a new monograph and listening to a classical station on her old radio.

“Graham,” says Jack without prelude, and beckons forward with his hand. In his left he carries a thick manilla folder. “We need to talk.”

Will stops writing. She skewers him over her glasses. “Will this involve actual talking, or is it a metaphor for my magic?”

“I don’t have time for a smartass. Can you make yourself useful to me right now or not?”

Will lowers her pencil to the desk. She’s been awake since five-thirty in the morning to teach; Jack has probably been up longer, but the dark hollowed lining of his eyes weren’t etched by physical exhaustion. Another night, of many nights, squandered to fear. The desire to ask after Bella, a woman she’s never met, breaks like a cresting wave over her bow, but he wouldn’t forgive her. You don’t bring things to work.

(Unless you sent a trainee to her death.)

“You think it’s the Ripper,” she says.

Relief creases his forehead, and a certain wildness flares his pupils. “The body turned up outside the Bay. All the classic hallmarks.”

He extends the folder.

Will doesn’t take it.

“I’m done, Jack,” she says quietly, once her courage has built to ample. “For now. Until…”

“One look at one case won’t put you over the edge.”

“How are you sure about that? Do you know what my edge is? Because I certainly don’t.”

Jack’s lips thin into a pale line. “Will,” he says, not _Graham_ , and Will loathes knowing when she’s being played. “We need you on this.”

Will hides her hands beneath the desk so she can grip her knees. “And I need to not be on this. Take it to Alana. She’s the best forensic psychiatrist I know. Take it to Hannibal for all I care. Just don’t ask me to look. I’m…figuring out my limits.”

Will’s not sure what she expects - a volcanic eruption, accusations of cowardice. But perhaps Jack’s supply of anger has been siphoned off elsewhere where it’s most needed. His face solidifies into a sight too close to illuminated illustrations of Biblical vengeance, and he drops the folder on her desk.

He only says two words before he leaves - “Abigail Hobbs” - and it nearly blows Will to the ground.

She stares at the folder. Gustav Mahler’s _The Adagietto_ swells to its fourth movement.

She slams the radio off and speeds her way to Baltimore.

By the time she reaches Hannibal’s building, her tempestuous mood’s calmed into something stabler. She actually laughs as she removes the keys from the ignition. If debating whether to take a case is the only major stress factor she has left, that’s a hell of an improvement.

Hannibal opens the office door with a surprised expression but adapts in a blink. “You don’t have an appointment,” he says behind a transparent mask of faux displeasure.

Will pushes her windswept hair behind her ear. Her cheeks are warm from effort, heart-rate slightly elevated. “You take walk-ins?”

His lips twitch. “Not on principle.” He opens the door wide and sweeps her in.

She drops onto the nearest chair, sighing, and defies proper etiquette by toeing off her shoes, but Hannibal doesn’t seem to mind, certainly seen worse behavior by now.

“While this unexpected surprise is lovely,” he says while taking the seat opposite, unbuttoning his jacket before he does, “it is still a surprise.”

Will gestures helpless. “Don’t, don’t sit there. Makes me feel like we’re back in therapy.”

With an amused look Hannibal remains exactly where he is, but beckons her forward with a single crooked finger. A simple gesture, and it works - excitement, abrupt and delightful, licks a distraction up her spine, and she drags her sore bones across the carpet to him. His hands slide the width of her waist, notch into her hipbones and tug her down into his lap. Will goes easy as poured, melted butter. He’s warm and solid and Will fits herself into his open spaces as his arms tuck her in like a child to bed.

“Better?” he queries. He’s every inch the smitten husband, glowing softness and conspiratorial smile.

“Mmm.” Will hides her face in his neck. She recognizes his aftershave, a woodsy, rich musk. She takes the time to orientate herself in a different space. “Long day.”

Keenly attuned to her variations of mood, Hannibal rests both hands on her shoulders.

“ _Dimmi perché il vostro cuore soffre_ ,” he says, soft as a summer’s breeze.

Will’s quick. He trained her well, and her tongue proved skilled. “ _Kiek laiko turite_?”

Hannibal chuckles. He kisses the crown of her head and applies pressure to her shoulders - a massage, expert and firm on her bunched musculature. “ _Tout si mon temps vous appartient_.”

She tells him. Hannibal listens attentive, does not interrupt, until she’s finished. He tisks his tongue softly. “Very unprofessional of Jack. He should respect your decision.”

“Jack’s profession is getting his job done regardless of the cost. He was right - about Abigail. The reason she’s alive is because I took the Hobbs case. If I hadn’t, we might, _might_ one day have found cushions stuffed with her hair.”

Hannibal doesn’t disagree. The feeling of his hands on her shoulders are replaced by the sharp dig of antlers.

“You think I should look,” she says.

The dam's opened, or at least leaked enough for her to finger the sore bruise.

“I believe you were responsible for Abigail’s survival, yes. I also think you know your mind better than anyone, and better than you believe you do.”

His fingers skim underneath her hair to stroke the sensitive nape of her neck. Will shivers, bones turned to liquid from his expert touch.

“I don’t think I can stand having more souls on my conscience. But…”

Hannibal fills the silence with what her lungs can’t form into air. “What about your own soul?”

Driving home, she scratches at the skin beneath her wedding ring.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Less than forty-eight hours later she calls Beverly.

“It’s a copycat. There’s all the style, but no whimsy. It’s not…creative. The Ripper elevates his victims to art. He’s not a hack-and-dice slasher from a horror movie. Don’t tell Jack this came from me.”

“He’ll know."

Will hangs up and dry swallows two aspirin.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“Hannibal?”

Will instantly feels his breathing change against her body, but he doesn’t move. The bedroom is dark, and fog ghosts past the window, and there are simultaneous heartbeats against her back and within her stomach.

“Would you kill someone?” she whispers, as if the fog could eavesdrop. “Again? If it meant protecting the people you love?”

Hannibal presses his forehead into the back of her neck.

“Yes,” he answers at normal volume, daring the elements to judge.

Will sleeps the night through.

 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

She hears the dogs from outside. Nails clicking, an excited whine. She opens the door and sidesteps the swarm while using her body as a blockade to keep them from darting outside. 

“Down, boys. _Tsk_.” She manages to slip off her boots before snuffling noses and large paws plaster her legs. She kneels to attend to the masses of wiggling fur. “Yeah, yeah, nice to see you, too. Don’t give me that look, Buster, you’ve been fed. Liars.”

A sharp whistle breaks the congregation’s attention. Hannibal appears in the hallway without any sound of approach, shirtsleeves rolled and apron around his waist. He snaps his fingers and Will’s dogs flock to the friendly man who feeds them tasty scraps. Funny how fast their loyalties were won.

“Your timing’s impeccable,” Hannibal says as he weaves through the canine blockade. “Dinner is almost ready.”

“Good. I’m starving.”

“Wouldn’t want you any other way.”

Once he’s within reach Hannibal lifts her to her feet and removes the briefcase from her hand. “Let me.”

“I’m pregnant, not incapacitated.”

“Did I say you were?”

Hannibal draws her close for a kiss. When they part, Will’s smiling wide and stupid and hopeless as can be.

“Hi,” she says.

Hannibal echoes the smile in his own way; more reserved, yet it’s his lowest scale of reserve. “Hello,” he returns, voice steeped in good humor. “Make yourself comfortable in the dining room. I’ll join you shortly.”

Will does when she’s changed out of her work clothes (part of being comfortable, nowadays). The table’s centerpiece is a single Osiria Rose. Hannibal spoke of them long before Will saw one in the flesh, petals blood-red on the inside and pure silver-white on the outside. It’s an exquisite combination.

Not long after she settles Hannibal makes his grand entrance carrying a reddish-brown meat on a silver salver.

Will blinks at the offering. She leans in. 

“A heart?” she asks. Dumbly.

Hannibal sets the platter on the table before retrieving a knife and slicing through as smoothy as a still water current. The meat falls into slices.

“A remarkably lean organ,” he muses, “yet such a potent symbol of life and the things that make us human. Good and bad, love and ache.”

Will checks him a fond smirk without raising her head. The platter also boasts fingerlings, a celery root puree, mushrooms, and arugula. As always, his work is immaculate. Consumption made art. It deserves admiration.

“Hyperbole isn’t an answer,” she says. “What's the occasion?”

“Need there be one?”

“The only time you’ve fixed me a heart was Valentine’s Day, hence the suspicion you’re buttering me up.”

“We are alive and together with our lives before us. Need there be a reason?”

She hates how easy he makes this. He ruins her for the rest of the world with the way he cradles but does not stifle.

“Definitely buttering me up.”

She studies Hannibal’s precise smile and finds neither confirmation or denial. Rather than dividing the partitioned heart onto two plates, he draws a chair alongside Will and spears the meat on a fork. He raises it to her mouth and she obediently opens, chews, swallows. A heart melts succulent in her mouth better than ripe fruit, the flavor enhanced with sprinkles of coriander, herbed Vinaigrette, and a delicate, light coating of salsa verde. It’s immaculate, if not as ostentatious as Hannibal’s usual fair. 

“If the whole thing tastes that good, I’m fine with you swaying me with food."

Hannibal's smile is sharp as an unfolding blade. “The doe lived a full life. She was a staunch fighter until the end.”

An sudden pressure twinges between her eyes. “I thought your butcher was merciful, or - ” She gestures inarticulate. “Whatever would be the appropriate term.”

“Some hurt is inevitable.”

Will snorts a little too derisive. “I think you just discovered the moral of life. All meat is murder, isn’t it?”

“Pessimism has no place at my dinner table,” Hannibal rebukes without heat. “ _Carpe diem_ , dear Will.” He leans in to claim a reassuring, if swift, kiss. “And if all meat were murder, humanity would be little more than animals.”

They finish their meal while discussing meaningless their respective days. The _panna cotta_ dessert is a perfectly sweet aftertaste. She assists in washing the dishes, as is her wont as a cohabitant, and lets the dogs out for their last bathroom run before cleaning up for bed. She emerges pinked from the shower and crawls under the maroon sheets, where Hannibal composes an article on surgical addiction long-form on parchment.

Will presses against his shoulder. “Is that more interesting than me?” 

“Merely passing the time.” He sets paper and pen on the bedside table and Will’s already waiting for her kiss by the time he turns back. Both of them taste of dinner beneath the minty tang of toothpaste, Hannibal’s tongue carrying remnants of Montrachet. Will worries his bottom lip for good measure, a small bite followed by one hard enough to make him sigh with pleasure.

“Careful, please,” he scolds, eyes half-lidded. “I have patients tomorrow.”

“I’ll go easy on you.”

It’s refreshing to just lie entwined, treasure the gentle high of affection without pushing for an ending. Hannibal’s palms fold her within. Will massages one hand through his hair, the stiff gel crackling away into softness, while the other ponders the scope of him like braille. 

Ballooned up with unbearable fondness, Will sighs. “Marriage could be worse.”

Hannibal chuckles, warm and dark and from deep within. A huge, stupid grin shivers up Will’s spine to her mouth, and she hides her face in his neck.

“Don’t make fun of me,” she mutters. 

“I wouldn’t dare.” Hannibal presses his smile into her heated cheek. “I’m glad I thought to ask.”

Sighing again, Will flops onto her back and stretches from fingers to toes. She yawns, and peers at Hannibal’s similarly contented posture. 

“So,” she says, “are you going to tell me what you’ve done?”

The illustrious heart. She didn’t forget, just waited.

Now Hannibal sighs, his arm beneath his head. “I’m having a friend for dinner tomorrow.”

“This is unlike you how?”

Her mind spins options; then the proverbial lightbulb blinks on.

“You invited Frederick Chilton, didn’t you?” 

“The best way to avoid conflict with a man you interact with professionally is to interact with him personally.”

Dread snakes out from her throat to her fingertips. “When did how I interact with him become a priority?” she demands.

“Since he was added as a bureau consultant. You may have mentioned your frustration at his increased presence.”

_May_ have. Asshole.

“You do know he wants to sleep with me?”

“It would be very vulgar of him to pursue you now.”

“Wouldn’t put it past him. But if he does, don’t go Alpha male.”

“So you’re open to the situation?”

Will cranes her neck and kneads her forehead. The shadow of an approaching migraine, the same from earlier in the night. “I wouldn’t say ‘open’ so much ‘as backed into a corner’,” she snaps. “You could’ve asked me.”

“He invited himself. I accepted. It seemed a natural progression to your interactions.”

“ _Fuck._ How about saying no? Did you even consider how uncomfortable it would make me? But I guess that doesn’t matter, when your precious propriety’s at stake.”

Will throws back the sheets and curses her way into the bathroom. She slams cabinet doors.

“You’re acting immature,” Hannibal chastises, although his words contrast with his detached tone.

Her indignation flares wildfire hot. “Oh, you wanna go there? You _really_ want to go there with me? Maybe to you he’s just an annoyance, but to me he’s…” She’s so jittery, her fingers fumble trying to open the Aleve bottle. “He’s a predator. A different kind of one than those that make the news, but still.”

Gets the bottle open. Only one left. She takes it anyway, the tap water lukewarm.

“I did not realize you felt such passion on the subject,” he observes.

Will throws the bottle in the trash. “You would’ve if you asked.”

She pads back to her side of the bed. Hannibal’s eyes are slitted, his hair soft, his mouth reddened and wet from kissing, in a bed they share, and the combination drops her stomach. She’s weak. He’s harmless, and soft, the weight and desire of his gaze intoxicating.

“You realize,” he says, tact slowing his words, “you needn't stay with the Bureau. We can live comfortably. I would take care of you.”

_Take care of me?_

“You want me to be a dependent housewife?” she barks. Harsher than she should, the threat of a fight if he pushes the subject, but she can’t help herself. Her head, the long day at work, the various bodily aches of pregnancy, and her omnipresent terror of confinement. Denied the freedom of choice. 

_Locked away._

Hannibal's eyes assess her oil-stained t-shirt, the rolled-up hem of her sweatpants, the wet hair frizzing as it air-dries. “Even if I did, I doubt you're suited to it.” His lips twitch. “I enjoy our subversion of typical gender roles.”

The comment lightens her. “Well, I do eat better with you around.”

“Thank heavens for that.”

Mood deflected, Will breathes out a chuckle. Bottom lip between her teeth, she bops him with her foots. “You're going to turn me into a pudgy professor.”

Hannibal seems delighted at the prospect. He pinches her side enough to cause an indignant growl. “Let’s say it was part of my ultimate goal. You’ve been underfed and malnourished since I met you.”

“But still sexy, right?”

“Devastatingly.”

“So you like your women curvy.”

“I like you.”

“Smooth talker.”

“I prefer to think of it as honesty.”

“So what was the main goal?”

Without pause, Hannibal responds “This,” turns her flawlessly into a kiss drunk on contentment. Will dreams of suspending time to cherish such simple kindness.

“Very smooth talker."

Hannibal rubs her side through her shirt. “I'm afraid I lied earlier.”

“How so?”

“My goal has always been your happiness.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back! Originally planned for this chapter to involve several more scenes, but when it hit 15K I decided to split it in half. Brevity, what? 
> 
> Mahler's "The Adagietto" was written as a love song for his wife. It's gorgeous and very Hannibal-esque in mood. The languages they toss back and forth are Italian, Lithuanian, and French, respectively. Notice how Will's the one who pokes him in his native tongue.
> 
> Next time: the dinner with Chilton, we finally see Abigail again, and Will's not the only one who has bad dreams. (I basically could have titled this chapter "foreshadowing. FORESHADOWIIIIIIING!")


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She sees blood. More blood, so much, painting the walls and their artwork in a wild spray, staining her clothes, filling her mouth, pouring from her eyes and blinding her world red.
> 
> Chilton gagging on it as it seeps from a ragged cut across his open throat. Air bubbles rising up, popping.
> 
> She *sees* -

 

“A dry Riesling, to start. Classic blue slate fruits, such as apple and white peach, emerge on the palate, with an elegant texture and a pure finish.”

“You certainly know your finery. No edible tongues this evening, I hope?”

Hannibal unleashes his most devastating charm-the-company smile. “Not tonight,” he says. He pours a serving of wine for himself before taking his seat. “Just the oysters.”

Chilton samples his drink. He’s practiced using his peripheral vision to watch his subjects in interviews. He believes he can watch Will this way undetected. He’s wrong.

“You’re quiet tonight, Mrs. Lecter.” The way he says that last name, the honorific before it purposefully emphasized, rings of subdued laughter. “Not feeling well?”

Having chosen the path of few words, Will keeps her chin lowered and her eyes blocked by the bridge of her glasses. “Been better,” she murmurs. “Headache.”

Few words and several hours, and then she can sleep.

If she survived dinner with a combined duo of Freddie Lounds and Abigail Hobbs, surely she can survive one with Dr. Frederick Chilton.

“I hope the little bundle of joy isn’t giving you a hard time,” he says, steeped in sympathy.

Will suppresses a twitch. She wonders if it’s normal for proprietary feelings to surge hot as wildfire when another person mentions your child, has no way of knowing. Is too nervous to ask.

“Not yet,” she answers. She scrapes the acorns and malasa onto her fork along with the oyster, eats. Doesn’t provide Chilton any bait to rise to, which doesn’t seem to perturb him. Observing Will Graham in her natural habitat, even through a sheen of protective glass, might satisfy his interests enough.

The men engage in superficial small talk - discoveries, methods, moral codes of conduct. Will consumes the meal programmed and vacant without tasting. That at least isn’t Chilton’s fault; thanks go to the so-called bundle of joy. Her stomach doesn’t turn, however, which is acceptable progress.

Over the course of an hour plates are cleaned, the wine bottle finished. Chilton gamely suggests another, in no hurry to leave, and consumes most of it himself over dessert.

“I should finish grading,” Will says once as the atmosphere’s conducive. An excuse, which Hannibal knows, but he lets her rise from the table without remonstration. A kiss to her cheek in farewell. It’s chaste in its brevity, but stings beneath Chilton’s following eyes.

“I must congratulate you on how well you've done for yourself, Wilhelmina,” Chilton says, abruptly, while holding his wine glass by the stem. A poor mime’s version of sophistication.

Will pauses in her retreat.

“A respected husband, a baby - “ He pauses and the silence says _so fast,_ it says _too soon_. “Most people with a...” He casts a glance at Hannibal, whose face remains studiously assembled. “... _disability_ as pronounced as yours aren't fortunate enough to live successfully normal lives.”

Will tugs her shirtsleeve into her closed palm. She’s rising to defense, a cat with its fur rubbed backward. “Some people call it my gift.” Not a descriptor Will herself is apt to use - Hannibal’s words serve as a powerful buttress.

Chilton shrugs. “Depends on who you ask, I suppose. It's a gift for the psychiatric circle in any regard.” He aims a sly smirk at Hannibal. “In more ways than one, eh?”

Hannibal’s smile, a rattlesnake’s tail of a thing, doesn’t reach his eyes. “A profound gift indeed. Let me take your plate, Frederick.”

A storm’s brewing. Will looses the dogs for a trip outside and feels the heavy thickness in the air that precedes thunder. The breeze carries a faint salty scent off the ocean; the smell of her childhood.

Rather than indulge memory she secures a tarp over the burgeoning little plants in her makeshift garden. She dusts the soil off her palms, wipes the fog off her glasses with her shirttail and watches from the porch as the dogs romp.

She’s grown to appreciate Baltimore and its creature comforts, but there is always Wolf Trap, nirvana existing untouched and unblemished. A dulled longing for a clear starlit sky, foot-worn trails, tree branches scratching her windows, no soul for miles. Maybe they can spend weekends there. Hannibal did appreciate the quaint, untamed nature.

Maybe, she tests the fantasy, they’ll move one day. Off to Sugarloaf Key, or a remote cabin in the forested mountains.

A good place to raise a child.

Will inhales a deep breath through her nose. She releases it back into the tumultuous air, and with it, some of her ire.

Boys will be boys. Chilton will be Chilton. Much as she despises the ideology, in truth there’s little she can do, and always hovering on her toes to swat him down exhausts her bone-deep.

There are more important things to worry about, anyway. Even if that thing still seems like an imaginary entity, existing only in biological responses and test results.

(Why do they call it _a bundle of joy_? Why is happiness expected, automated?)

Winston lopes up to the porch, the day's energy depleted and ready for the permanence of home. He noses Will’s hand to make his point. Absently, Will scratches his chin.

“Me too, boy,” she sighs.

By the time she returns inside it’s started to sprinkle rain. She winces as a slight itch tickles across her stomach. Food went down wrong, maybe. She fills a glass of water from the kitchen sink and eavesdrops for activity.

“I’ll call you a cab,” Hannibal says from the hallway. “Can’t let you drive yourself home.”

A drunk Chilton. Spectacular.

Morbidly curious, Will dips her head into the hallway. Hannibal has his phone to his ear, his back to Chilton, while Chilton visually nitpicks the area. Things he approves of, things he covets, the refined extravagance he finds amusing.

When he catches sight of Will, he smiles. It’s not sneering, greedy; in fact, it might be the most honest, halfway to pleasant expression Will’s seen from the man. He ambles closer, his balance holding together well despite the abundance of alcohol. His polyester suit jacket is draped neatly over one arm.

“You look pale,” he observes. “Well,” he amends with a light chuckle, “more than usual.”

A slight slur in his voice, but the major difference between intoxicated Chilton and sober Chilton is volume. Will shrinks back. Loud male sounds always make her cringe, and it’s a reaction impossible to miss. Chilton blinks with surprise, before the lines of his face firm with renewed interest.

“Why didn’t you join us after dinner?” he asks. “We had a tantalizing conversation.”

Is it a genuine worry for her health? Doubtful. He’d enjoy watching her unravel off her poorly spun spindle, under appropriate circumstances. But, like his smile, ulterior motive has taken a backseat. He’s simply enjoying the pleasure of her company. Will’s further convinced Hannibal’s talents extend to miracle-working.

She bulwarks herself with folded arms across her chest, careful to keep the water glass upright. She shrugs. “I didn’t feel well.”

“Shame. Any better now?”

A distant warning licks up her spine. She shrugs again and sips the water, the latter an excuse to drop her eyes into the glass.

Chilton gestures the distance between Will and Hannibal’s turned back. “What a remarkable story you two have,” he drawls. “If I were that TattleCrime girl, I'd call it – _love at first insight_.” He chuckles, impressed by his own cleverness. “I'm glad to know you don't despise all psychiatrists, Wilhelmina.”

“Only the ones deserving.”

He swerves past that roadblock. “Since any sort of doctor-patient relationship between you and Hannibal would now be entirely unethical, if you find yourself in need of therapeutic care, I’d be honored to help you in any way I can.”

“I’ll see how I feel.”

Chilton accepts the refusal gamely. “Well, if I can’t tempt you to my hospital on my account,” he continues, he can’t let the silence sit, and Will bites her lip enough to hurt, “I'm sure our mutual friend Dr. Gideon would enjoy your company. You left quite the impression on him.”

“Him, or your version of him?” she half-growls. She’s rapidly losing patience, and Hannibal’s been on the phone for too long. She watches the muscles of his back shift beneath his powder-blue shirt. A stab of longing shakes her from molars to toes.

She doesn’t know whether to pride herself for taking strength in another or despise her weakness.

Finally, a fault-line cracks Chilton’s veneer.  “What a sharp tongue.” And then his face twists into something gruesome as he scans for advantage. “I'm sure Hannibal enjoys that.”

Fury, hot and wild, blooms up the length of Will's neck. Chilton eyes the pale flesh with the look of a man torn between kissing or tearing into muscle.

“To be honest, I’m not sure how you and him... _work._ You seem a bit lackluster for his tastes. But then, maybe that’s the appeal. You’re his Pygmalion.”

“By that standard, one might wonder why he indulges your overtures at friendship,” she says, chillingly calm to her own ears.

Chilton’s lips thin. “There’s no need to spoil a perfectly nice evening, _Mrs._ Lecter.”

 _Mrs._ again. Another man’s property.

“I wasn’t aware there was something to spoil.”

He huffs. “I suppose teaching you manners is a lost cause even for Hannibal.” And before Will can react, he leans toward her. “Perhaps I’d have better luck teaching you,” he says under his breath.

“Excuse me?”

Chilton smiles. He touches her shoulder. Too close too close every cell in her body starts _screaming_ awareness. “Do I need that cab tonight?”

It takes Will a moment. Even on her best days she’s not the most adept at interpreting social cues, despite Chilton’s lack of subtlety. She reads his body language, his past flirtations and the alcohol on his breath. A brief sweep of his pupils show they’ve darkened, Will recognizes the intent from strangers on the street, professional colleagues, the predators in bars who would snatch her into their jaws.

She laughs.

A clipped, startled bark, but it wipes the confident expression clean off Chilton’s face and his hand from her shoulder.

“Not unless you like to watch,” she says. A tight smirk. “I’m very possessive.”

Chilton withdraws. His mouth slants cruel. “There’s no need to be crude,” he snips. He covers the wound by brushing dust, invented or real, off his jacket. “I’ve never been anything but polite to you, Mrs. Lecter, and all I receive in return is rudeness and disdain.”

Will wets her lips. She closes her eyes, and for the first time in months, lets the pendulum swing.

She strips away the layers of his being and pierces him whole.

“Overcompensation by imitation. Your gestures, your speech, your sense of dress, your stolen observations – your fixation with me, a scintillating mind in a pretty little package. But it's hollow. Inept. A pathetic imitation without soul. I know you want to be Hannibal, but trying to fuck his wife won't help you.”

Will opens her eyes. The world drifts back into focus, colors and shapes.

Chilton’s angry. Too angry. The urge to fight-or-flight freezes the nape of her neck, an icepick jammed through her skull.

“You really think you’re anything more than a study to him?” he demands. “Your beloved husband didn’t marry you for your charming personality.”

For a lazy opportunist, Chilton is also a diligent study. He bruises her to her raw, hidden quick, and the floor drops away from Will’s head with a rush.

If they are to verbally spar, this is his best ammunition. The one he’s held reserved in his back pocket.

Will doesn’t, cannot, reply. Her only defenses sounds trite to her own mind, a fact she’s been incapable of reconciling despite a ring and a home and a baby.

Chilton’s hand, suddenly, a greedy vise clutching her elbow.

“I'll bet he didn't even have to make you dinner first,” he whispers.

Her hand snaps into a fist, the high bright sound of shattering crystal, Will’s muscles retract, and she’s punched Chilton in the windpipe.

It happens so fast.

Chilton hits his knees wheezing for air, hands clutching his throat. There’s blood in her palm from embedded glass shards, dripping between her fingers. Will’s vaguely aware of pain, a sharp stinging. Unthinking, she yanks the largest glass shard from her hand. She grasps it in a weapon’s stance, harder when it slips from warm wetness.

Cowering, Chilton stares with more than shock - something close to fear in his eyes at this woman smaller than him in heels, his mouth frozen in a half-yell strangled to silence. It hits her bloodstream better than a high.

She sees blood. More blood, so much, painting the walls and their artwork in a wild spray, staining her clothes, filling her mouth, pouring from her eyes and blinding her world red.

Chilton gagging on it as it seeps from a ragged cut across his open throat. Air bubbles rising up, popping.

She _sees -_

Hannibal.

Hannibal’s watching.

Has been watching, the phone at his thigh.

He says nothing.

The moment collapses.

The only blood is from her hand, flowing steady to the carpet.

Chilton drags in air, gasping sounds too close to death rattles. He shakes at her feet. Won’t meet her eyes.

The glass shard slips from her fingers, hits the floor with a sweet chime.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

She manages halfway up the stairs before her body collapses of its own volition. Her knee smacks hard on a step. Her glasses slip down her nose. Her hand snatches for the bannister and slides right off, leaving a trail of blood and clammy sweat. She twists enough to sit down, back to the wall, and then…done. She’s boneless.

She sits and listens to the sounds of Chilton scrambling to repair his dignity: polished leather shoes snapping, car keys rattling out from a pocket.

“I don’t think I’ll be visiting with you from now on, Dr. Lecter.” The front door opens and the storm sounds clearer, closer. “Your wife is disturbed. Maybe you deserve each other.”

The door slams. Something fragile whines from the shake. The storm’s deadened by barriers again.

Car engine, car headlights. The latter whip past the windows too fast, and guilt infests her gut. He needs that taxi.

She pulls off her glasses with her non-injured hand and closes her eyes. Lowers her head toward her knees and all the blood rushes forward to the front of her skull, pounding merciless behind her temples.

Guilt is a familiar sensation. What runs beneath it, she’d hoped time had eradicated.

It’s not very long at all before Hannibal climbs the steps and sits beside her. She jumps when his hand combs the hair off her brow, then sinks gratefully into the width of his palm. He unbuttons her blouse to her collarbone and fans her skin with his hand. It’s not until he does so Will realizes she’s soaked through with sweat.

“Don’t put me away,” she mumbles. Her mouth tastes sick, like stale vomit.

“Why would I?”

“Maybe you should. Better for everyone.”

“You’ll find I disagree.”

He lifts a glass of water to her lips. She obediently swallows.

“Aren’t you going to clean up my mess?”

“That can wait.”

Hannibal sits with her until she cools, body and head. Her hand tingles, a thousand tiny pinpricks of numbness.

“Don’t ever do this to me again. It’s your fault.”

“I won’t apologize for my actions, which were done in your best interest,” Hannibal says. “I can only apologize for the outcome. Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.”

“Really? Never noticed.”

Hannibal watches. Keen and close, too much a scientist than a concerned husband, and Will’s the fluttering butterfly pinned to a page with a long, thin needle.

_Your beloved husband didn’t marry you for your charming personality._

She swallows down the fear, cloying in her throat.

“Why did you ask Chilton to come here? Honestly.”

Hannibal doesn’t shrug, but inclines his head in a gesture suggestive of one. “I hoped you could settle your differences with Dr. Chilton, for your peace of mind.” Without breaking composure, his winks. “You did.”

She hacks up an unexpected laugh before it morphs into a groan. “That’s one way to put it.”

“The only sensible way.”

She tents her palms over her mouth. “There goes what’s left of my career. Whatever it was to begin with.”

Chilton could claim assault, and having two charges on her record won’t win her any favors with an already disenfranchised employer.

“Somehow I doubt Dr. Chilton will publicly admit to the fact a woman humiliated him,” Hannibal points out.

True. Let alone the fragile, bird-boned Will Graham. She smiles, albeit morbidly, at the thought. “Sorry I broke your glass.”

“I have more.”

Hannibal extends his hand. Will surrenders her blood-stained palm to his tender mercies.

After moving her to the kitchen table, his experienced surgeon hands extract the tiny glass shards from her palm. A bowl of hot water, a swab of antiseptic, layers of gauze wrapped firm.

“Try not to use it,” he instructs when he’s finished. “Activity will reopen the wounds.”

“Guess I’ll have to powerpoint left-handed.” Will lifts her arm to examine his handiwork. “How are you not disgusted by me?” she asks, fascination winning out over fear of abandonment. “Or afraid?”

“Why should I be either?”

“The more pertinent question is why you _aren’t_. Normal wives don’t...do what I did. Normal people in general.”

“Normal is a definition dependent upon commonly accepted social mores.”

Sleeves rolled past the elbow, he strips off the plastic gloves and disposes them in the trash, replaces the gauze and antiseptic bottle back into their kit. All of the sounds are exaggeratedly loud in the silence, which he lets enfold them to suffocating.

He’s waiting for the admission. Her confession. He will give no quarter without.

“I saw…” She makes to clench a fist and stops herself. “I saw myself slitting his throat. Like...like Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Like I’ve dreamed doing to Abigail.”

Time seems to stop, not skip or be lost, for a fraction of a heartbeat as Hannibal stills. Then he closes the kit’s lid without looking up. “You wanted to kill him.”

“ _No._ I wouldn’t have hurt him.”

“But you saw an outcome where that would be satisfactory. A punishment for his crimes.”

Will shakes her head so hard her vision blurs. Woozy, she grips the table with her good hand. “Chilton’s an ass, but he’s not...Hobbs.”

“Beneath your righteous anger, do you not feel a certain satisfaction? This man you find repugnant will no longer lay a hand on you. He didn’t succeed in making you a victim. You’re more powerful than him.”

The fear in his eyes.

The power, yes; to make him bleed.

A turn of her wrist into his jugular, a dance of blood warm across her cheeks, a twitching body at her feet.

“I _wouldn’t_ have hurt him.”

“Whatever your intentions, the fact remains you could have,” Hannibal says, although it lacks the harshness of a rebuttal. “And that pleased you.”

He rises from the table long enough to return the kit to its place in a cabinet. “I’m not afraid,” he says, mercifully pivoting the subject back, “because I’ve seen worse sights than you. Some may term this an overreaction. I’m not so quick to label. Dr. Chilton met his due.”

“My due was punching him in the throat?”

“Perhaps unconventional,” he admits, “but you have never been conventional.”

“That’s an understatement.”

Hannibal finds her uninjured hand through touch, circles his thumb feather light across the underside of her wrist to her palm. The tenderness rises a shiver to her skin.

“This can be our secret.” He traces the path of a lifeline like lining in pencil. “If you fear the judgment of others.”

With a slice of clarity clean as a blade, Will knows beyond anxiety or suspicion he trusts her. Trust, that fleeting, fragile thing, never easy for the man whose meticulously erected walls have been cemented since childhood.

Even if she had killed Chilton, he would have protected her. They would’ve buried the body together, like he did for Abigail.

Logically, Will knows it’s wrong. Wrong done for the right reasons, to keep Abigail from prison, to keep Will from...anything. But she’s fit to burst with absurd, overwhelming fondness, and a weight of humility for whatever she did to earn such kindness.

“I don’t deserve you.” The words fall out, clumsy.

“Perhaps, as Dr. Chilton said, we deserve each other.”

“Then I honestly feel sorry for you.”

Will leans her head against his shoulder. Hannibal’s arm moves to encircle her back, a restrained, simple weight on sore bones.

“Shall we call it a night?” he asks.

“Mm. Yeah.”

That same itch, cramp, something in her stomach again. Ghosting her skin from the inside.

A flutter.

_Oh._

Will snatches Hannibal’s wrist and presses his outstretched palm over her stomach. She can’t put it to words. Thankfully, Hannibal is far from ignorant. With a curious expression he turns his focus to the small curve of sensitive flesh, careful not to apply too much pressure.

He waits, patience endless, without a flicker of protest.

“These may not be frequent for several more weeks,” he reminds her on principle.

Of course. An ache winds tight along the length of her body but Will refuses to move.

And when their patience is rewarded with a motion that vibrates like a hiccup, the tiny lift of Hannibal’s mouth, the spark of wonder in his eyes, are worth any pain she could endure.

For the first time since they met, he says nothing because there is nothing worth saying.

Hannibal Lecter, struck dumb with awe in the face of something as normal as a kicking baby.

For Will, awe in the original sense of the world - a kind of undefined dread running abstract beneath the unknown.

But there’s another kick, and Will _laughs._ It spills from her, defense mechanism or maybe, maybe, total naked truth gestating in tandem alongside the fear.

Between her sound and the feeling, Hannibal shows teeth in the closest Will’s seen to a crooked smile.

“There you are,” he hums softly. He cups both hands where the baby should lay, thumbs stroking slow encouragement. He could bleed tenderness. “ _Amato tesoro_.”

Italian. Will struggles to call back his lessons. “Beloved treasure?”

“A favorite endearment of my mother’s.”

Simonetta Sforza-Lecter.

Will wears her ring and hopes, one day, to be remembered with such kindness.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

That night, in blinding technicolor, Will dreams a crown of antlers growing from her skull, breaking through flesh to twine up toward the sky, white petals on their tips.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“Will?”

She blinks herself out of a waking dream. Will’s eyes, foggy and tired, graze the melting skyline above the cherry blossom trees, pink and white and the blue of the sky, before landing on Alana.

“Sorry,” she apologizes. Always a _sorry._ Default response. She rubs her eyes beneath her glasses. “I was...drifting.”

Sitting beneath a canopy of draping color, shaded by the branches, Alana says, “I could tell. Anything I should be worried about?”

The words pile up behind her teeth as she doesn’t say them, but Alana must notice her reservation. Hand still on her eyes, Will rubs at a crick in her neck from last night’s sleep.

“If you think things - things that appall your every sensibility, but you still indulge in the act of that thought. How much better does that make you from the people who actually commit horrible crimes?”

The deep lines of Alana’s face smooth with understanding. If only she really knew.

“It’s a mask, Will. You absorb the emotions of others. You don’t become them.”

“What if you’re starting to question the difference between your thoughts and what’s been put there?”

Alana leans back in her portable lawnchair, legs crossed at the knee. She sips her iced tea, cubes slowly melting in the comfortable heat and watering down the taste, to make her answer nonchalant. It’s a distraction technique, and a good one. “The difference between desire and action is the person making the choice. And how deep that desire really permeates.”

Something wet grazes Will’s foot. She glances down and crooks a smile at the ball of black and white fuzz panting on the grass.

“She’s cute,” she tells Alana. She dangles a hand above the ground and the dog, a big, well-groomed and well-fed mutt by the name of Flannery, wiggles herself eagerly into Will’s fingers.

“I’m glad the rescue queen approves,” Alana teases.

“Picking up some of my worst traits.”

“Some of your better ones.” Will senses the emotional shift as Alana focuses closer. She’s not dissuaded, also knowing a distraction technique when she sees one. “Do you and Hannibal talk about how you feel?”

Will scratches the dog’s ears, is rewarded with a thumping tail. “Not as doctor and patient, if that’s what you’re asking. But yeah.” Will returns her hand to her lap. Flannery whistles disappointed. “I just like a second opinion. Sometimes.”

“Any way I can help.” Alana pushes to her feet and clicks her tongue at the dog to heel. “Let’s take a walk. Sunset’s gorgeous.”

If Alana is confused, or concerned, or any emotion without answer, it doesn’t show.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Will doesn’t see Frederick Chilton again.

Except for a chance passing in the offices, an abrupt brush of shoulders and a slanting of eyes to surprised faces because Will wasn’t watching her trajectory as she walked.

Chilton flinches. He adjusts quickly, lip curling; she’s the shit beneath his shoes, but Will is already leaving him behind.

She did not flinch.

Her smile, fleeting as it is, tastes like a cut.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Life is a balancing act, Will’s learned, after thirty years of failing to find that idolized happy medium. An art form. So much of herself has gone into her work, does she exist outside of it? Can it live, comfortable and fed, in the corner of the room, without demanding rule over her waking hours? What can she do without it?

Here is she is, presumably happily married with a doting husband and a growing baby, with the promise of a future of this. Nothing but this. Quiet, warmth, contemplation.

She doesn’t know how to start over. If it’s even possible. So she play-acts, and ignores, and chooses to listen to her better demons. Or angels.

Whichever’s winning out that day.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Only two classes, the lesson condensed into a short regurgitation to kick off the countdown until finals. Done early, the mansion-like house empty, Will chooses a book at random from Hannibal's expansive bookshelf and settles on the couch with the dogs.

“Buster, did you roll in a dead thing again? Get down.”

Buster doesn’t seem too threatened, if the roll of his eyes is any indication.

Her phone buzzes. Will doesn’t recognize the number and answers dubiously. “Graham here.”

It’s a reminder from the obstetrician’s office. Her next ultrasound, scheduled for tomorrow at six.

“Would you like to find out the sex of the baby?” the receptionist asks with manufactured brightness.

Will leans her head back against the wall. “Let me get back to you on that.”

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“I’d like to broach a topic, but it’s not...exactly subtle.”

“Nobody said it needs to be subtle,” Alana says.

Will sighs. “Maternal instinct. Default programming or a learned habit?”

She can’t see Alana over the phone, which makes social interaction easier, but in turn Will can’t read her as well. She imagines a shrug into Alana’s meditative pause.

“There are plenty of psychological - and biological - studies about the mothering instinct in mammals, but everyone’s experience is unique to who they are. The urge to _not_ mother could very well be as strong as the opposite. Or it could develop with time, like friendship.” Alana pauses; too technical. “I wouldn’t overthink it.”

“I didn’t say I was.”

Now Alana sighs. “Will,” she says, the single syllable of her name. It’s not pitying, which would set Will off; Alana sounds tired, and wary.

Will has nothing to say in return. She bothers the thought like a sore tooth.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Hannibal doesn’t drop Abigail’s name lightly anymore, or often, so Will always sits straighter, tunes her ears to his words and the color of his voice, when he does.

“Now that she’s come of legal age, she’s decided to travel.”

“You’re okay with that?”

Eyes on the road, Hannibal maneuvers the Bentley behind a minivan. “I’m not her legal guardian.”

“You might as well be, the stock she puts in your opinion,” Will presses. “Do you think she’s fit to be out on her own in the world?”

“Perfectly so. We discussed the prospect at length, both its advantages and disadvantages.” He flicks on the turn signal and pulls onto the highway. “Abigail knows her own mind. It’s time we let her grow.”

_We._

“When is she leaving?”

“Soon. Once she’s arranged her assets, said her goodbyes.”

Will watches through the window as buildings turn into trees and power lines. Those goodbyes do not include Will, besides the courtesy of Hannibal informing her.

“Good,” she says. She shifts in her seat. “I’m glad she’s moving on.”

 

_____________________________________________________

 

The obstetrician asks.

Hannibal defers to her with cool eyes.

“Yes,” Will says, clearly. “I don’t like surprises.”

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Monday afternoon, classes rescheduled, high on coffee and low on patience.

Beverly drops onto the break room couch beside Will, offers a muffin, and asks without preamble, “Boy or girl?”

Adrenaline still shaking her hands, Will passes over the ultrasound photo. It’s already curled at the edges, worn from worry.

Beverly Katz, born into a family full of loud boys, smiles kindly, a rare expression in the working world of forensics. “She’s gorgeous.”

Will, for her part, can barely make out the head. Murky colors and dark waters, indistinct shapes. Her world drifts behind her like a drunkard; time has left her behind, and she's observing from a nebulous space. “I don't know what to do with a girl.”

“Would you know any better what to do with a boy?”

“I'm inflicting pain on her just by choosing to bring her into the world. I'm selfish.”

“Then a lot of people are selfish. Should we never have daughters again because the world’s hopeless? Not to be a walking Chicken Soup for the Empath's Soul, but it's not like you’re the first person to feel overwhelmed by this. Take it one day at a time.”

Beverly looks at Will like she wants to rub her shoulder, arm, affectionate gestures, but respects Will’s limitations. Says, “I have a hunch you'll be a damn good mother. And I don’t know if you heard, but I’m good with hunches.”

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“We should talk names.”

“Should we?” Hannibal doesn't look up from Alexander Dumas’s _Le Grande Dictionnaire De Cuisine_ , silver reading glasses propped low on his nose. Will finds them endearing; fading eyesight a flaw they can share. “The child won't be born for months. It's hardly a pressing matter.”

“Maybe not, but I want to try. It makes her more of a living thing, instead of some...strange unknown entity.”

Will peels back the bedsheets and joins Hannibal in bed. He lifts his arm for her to settle beneath it.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Something she won’t hate. Like Will, for instance.”

“Then our best course of action is to leave her nameless.”

“You’re no help.”

“Forgive me.”

Will releases her mind off its chain to wander. Winston, on the bed, yawns, drops his chin onto Hannibal’s ankle. Without looking up from his book Hannibal hums a light remonstration to no effect.

“What about your mother?” she prods. The notion of names, identity and inheritance, has sunk its claws into her, shaking her out of her shell of inaction. “Or someone else in your family? Not to play the world’s tiniest violin, but I don’t have a wealth of fond memories to pick from. I thought...Abigail’s beautiful. But no. No, that’s…” She trails off, frustrated.

There is a clear, deliberate process of decision on Hannibal's face: weighing options, calculating outcomes, testing the extent of his safety, all without a twitch of muscle. Just as clear, it passes as clouds over sun, and he closes the book.

“My sister,” he says.

Will's world explodes into threads of color.

“You have a sister?” Voice blank, because she hasn't stopped spinning long enough to ground an emotion.

“Had,” Hannibal corrects with none of his usual delicacy. Scarred griefs cut anew. “She died at a young age.”

Double blinks in rapid succession, but his face remains smooth: he has decided to feel this, and accepted the outcome.

“How?”

“A harsh winter. She was too frail to survive.”

Will is not sure what she regrets more – his pain, or the shame of asking. “I'm sorry,” she mumbles, hoping the words cover both.

Finally, Hannibal looks at her again, and there is nothing in his eyes save contentment - with the moment. With the choice to share this. Her.

“Don't be,” he assures. “It was a very long time ago, in another life.”

In the safety of his arms, in his bed, Will permits herself a glimpse at the feeling – a singular child, now two, split into halves and the pain, the helplessness, the ringing ache of loss – Will shapes a sister for herself out of fog and oblivion, replaces the image with their unborn child, and can hardly breathe.

“What was her name?”

Hannibal doesn't answer. Rather, he molds Will's face into a kiss. The longing tremors her with recognition. She knows she’s being distracted, expertly at that, but if she can grant him even a modicum of the peace he provides her -

But he goes no further. Hannibal withdraws to press a last kiss below her eye, and the subject is closed. He clicks off the table lamp and Will lies down with a ravaging emptiness in her chest.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

A dream wakes her.

For the first time, it isn't her own.

Behind her, Hannibal's entire body shudders. While she slept he moved to the far opposite of the bed, giving her his back, and the outlines of every muscle stand out as tiny aftershocks undulate through him. He doesn't thrash – he's contorted in on himself like some tragic parody of the fetal position. Barely moving and entirely soundless, but Will recognizes the signs.

Her sleep-hazed focus narrows instantly. She rolls over and presses herself against the curved line of Hannibal's back. It's like holding a furnace, heat flooding from him even between two layers of clothes. Will hooks her arm over his torso and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the back of his neck.

“Sshhh,” she says. “Wake up.”

His head twitches toward her. She cards through his sweat-soaked hair, draws her thumb down his forehead. This is what he does for her in night terrors. “Hannibal.  You have to wake up.”

He rumbles. It's different, deeper and vibrating from his ribs. Will trails her fingers to his parted lips.

He's muttering, foreign and indistinct.

Seized by unexplainable instinct, Will presses her mouth to his ear.

“ _As cia, mano meile. Saldus veinas, pabusti._ ”

Hannibal throws off the covers and lunges upright, twisting around to pin her bodily onto the bed. His hands slam down over her throat and squeeze, eyes dilated vast as a chasm.

A black hole.

Instinct surges and Will fights back, clawing at his grip and twisting beneath his weight, but that only makes him press harder. Her chest tightens. Her breathing snaps short, and she goes limp. Shows her hands and presents herself in total submission.

_Don't panic. Panic means you're dead._

“Hannibal.” She coughs. Pain spasms up her breastbone, her windpipe. Lights sparking at the corners of her eyes. “It’s me.”

His features twitch with recognition. Whatever's haunting him peels away as quickly as a curtain drawn back. His pupils retract, the tension unspools. Hannibal releases her throat. Instantly Will collapses into shuddering gasps, heaving in air. He must hear her heart, it's ramming so loud in her ribs, head, neck, wrists, it will surely breach the confines of skin.

In swift, controlled movements, Hannibal rolls off, sits up, and snaps on the table light. He pushes off the bed without a word and slips into the shadows of the bathroom. When he returns, walking back into the faint spillage of light, he's washed his face and changed clothes – dark gray pajamas, minus the top. Will thinks of a lone drawer in Wolf Trap with dozens of identical white shirts and her heart clenches into a closed fist.

And as he walks to the bed, wide shoulders and trim muscles and large hands, Will thinks, for the first time in a long time, what that power's capable of.

Business-like, Hannibal sits on the bed’s edge. Will, in turn, rises against the headboard, palms pressed between her knees.

Making sure Will can see every motion, Hannibal raises his hand. She nods.

He takes stock of her throat, examining what Will's sure will be multicolored bruises the size of his grip come morning. He can't help but notice her racing pulse, and belatedly Will realizes the extent of the rest: quivering hands, the moisture beneath her eyes and it's all biological fight-or-flight responses, maybe she should try to stop, for his sake – but he'd say to let the reaction burn itself out. Suppressing the body does no good.

“I hurt you,” Hannibal says. He doesn't sound, or look, regretful. Startled, as if he hadn't accounted for the possibility in this way.

“It's okay.” Her words emerge a touch hoarse.

“No, Will.” His hand drops to the sheets. Truth, delivered dispassionately. “It isn’t.”

“You were having a nightmare. You didn't know what was happening.”

“Don't excuse my actions. I should be in complete control of myself."

The response she planned is interrupted by a sudden, sharp pain in her abdomen. It leaves her breathless, all other concerns forgotten.  

“I think...” A second kick, hard but not as painful. “I don't think she's happy we woke her up.”

A few minutes, and the sensations pass. Hannibal lets her catch her breath before instructing like a general, “You should lie down.”

“ _i_ should? Tell me. There's nothing I can't handle. It's only fair, when you carry my baggage around in your head.”

“Not tonight, Will. I'd like to sleep.”

“Wasn’t that the problem in the first place?”

“Then I’ll sleep in the guest room.”

Hannibal stands and crosses the length of the bedroom.

Will closes her eyes. The pendulum arcs wide before she can change her mind.

“After you lost your parents, you were sent to a Soviet-run orphanage.”

Hannibal stops in the frame of the open doorway.

“Older boys flocked to a silent, small child many generations removed from the royalty of his ancestor's name. You've grown into the scars on your back, now, reduced them to faint lines with time and muscle, but even when first inflicted they failed to hurt. 

“You didn't speak. You only ate when forced. When you woke, you saw your family in the shadows and trees. When you slept, you dreamed them more. You were lost – a creature of hunger and violence, born somewhere out in the cold.”

Will opens her eyes. She drops a covering over the golden light and reels herself back, hand over hand, thrashing against the line all the way.

It wasn’t right. She didn’t earn this knowledge, took it from him, stripped him bare, but isn't this what they are, pushing and digging to the truth? She doesn’t know. Will’s always cherished his lack of transparency.

She is only just beginning to understand him.

He still hasn’t moved, back muscles expanding and contracting with each mechanical breath.

“Won’t you talk to me?” she asks soft, too close to begging for her taste. “You've seen as many horrible things as I have, but you’re able to...you channel that into something worthwhile. You help others.”

Hannibal turns around. The shadows surround him.

“You think me some kind of healer?” She can’t read the tone of his voice.

“You're one of the best people I know. In your way.”

Hannibal steps back within the spread of the yellow lamplight. He stares at Will as if she's made him uncomfortable. No - unsettled. Will can barely place it, the most rare and out of place expression for the living epitome of assurance.

“Tell me what to do,” she says.

“Nothing.” Hannibal removes a fresh shirt from the dresser, slides it on. He must have cooled in the air conditioning. “At least, not at the present. This is not my first ill sleep, Will.”

Just the first in some time. He showed a weakness he did not pre-calculate, cannot take back. “It’s my fault,” Will says.

Hannibal doesn’t confirm or deny. Only says, “I think it’s best if we both sleep.”

 

_____________________________________________________

 

It wasn't the first time Hannibal's strangled her in bed. It's just the first time Will was frightened.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Will wakes slow but solid with the dawn. A mild headache, a cramped stomach. She glances at the clock – four hours, maybe five of uninterrupted sleep. Could be worse. Will be worse, when the baby arrives.

Hannibal's side of the bed is still warm. She shuffles downstairs, smells fresh coffee and finds a prepared mug of chicory flavor waiting on the kitchen counter, no sugar. Will folds the mug between her hands and soaks in the warmth even though she isn't cold.

There's a bark from outside. Emma, fussy as ever. The sound's followed by a low, chiding voice, words she doesn't catch. She lifts the blinds into the backyard.

Hannibal's kneeling in the grass surrounded by her dogs, running a brush through Emma's coat. Fur flies off in clumps, sticks to the legs of his trousers already peppered with muddy paw prints. Every few minutes he scratches her jaw to satisfy her ego.

Will leans against the window as he methodically works his way through each pup, even the feistier ones - Buster nips playful at his hand and dashes across the yard, but one snap of Hannibal's fingers and an imperious _here,_ and the dog's back, wearing that expression of uniquely canine guilt.

Her coffee goes cold.

She's deep-frying chickpeas and beans when the door clicks open and Hannibal whistles the pack in. They bound past him, crowding Will for a morning greeting and a try at licking her sauce-covered fingers.

Hannibal applies a lint-roller to his clothes, and then he observes her, rumpled clothes and mussed hair and glasses, working in his sanctum. Surprised to see her there, and even more surprised by the pleasant feeling it engenders. He weaves his way through the dogs and slides his arms around her waist, chest pressed to her back. Nuzzles his face in her neck – inhales long and deep once, then sighs heavy. The action reminds her of the dogs at their feet and Will suppresses a laugh, especially when they wander from the room after they realize Will’s attention’s been claimed by the alpha male.

“Thought I'd make us breakfast,” she says. Acknowledging his gesture without fumbling over awkward attempts at thanks.

“Falafel isn't a normal breakfast choice.” He sounds amused.

“Blame the kid. Plus, fava beans are good for you.”

Hannibal smirks into her throat.

He lets her work for a time, watching and holding, before he covers her throat with the width of his palm. Will stills.

She hasn't looked in the mirror yet; she'll wear collars, like she's worn long-sleeved shirts and scarves before to cover the bruises she asked for. He examines with calloused fingertips, so exquisitely gentle she barely feels pressure. The skin's sensitive, her inner throat still sore.

She waits.

Hannibal slides her hair behind one shoulder and lowers his mouth to the skin. Delicate, sweet, lingering – Will reacts, eyelids heavy, body light, blood thrumming behind her forehead. His hands fall to her hips and direct her to face him, so he can kiss lines across the bruises. She tilts her head back to allow him better access, her grounding sense of self slipping away when both his hands cup the back of her skull. Her arms fall to her sides, hands held out to not stain their clothes with sauce.

Later, as she drifts into merciful sleep, his mouth in her hair, his fingers tight in the hollow of her jaw, Hannibal says, “Mischa. Her name was Mischa.”

 

_____________________________________________________

 

When she first learns, Will does not yell. She does not scream, or break things. Even a sweat. She closes the manilla folder and lays her hand flat on top, as if stopping the wound would keep the facts from seeping forth.

“Does Jack know you're here?”

Beverly's watching Will’s every breath like she might come apart at the seams. The scrutiny is unnerving. “No,” Beverly says. “He didn’t want to involve you.”

Will's eyes are the only things to move, flitting to Katz – blinking, once, to clear the sheen of fog.

“But you’re here.”

“Everyone knows you're our best bet. You're not a frail little girl, Graham. You’ve been stable, and you can handle yourself.”

“On my own?”

“No. You’ll have us.”

“To protect me from myself?”

Arms crossed, Beverly holds her stare and answers, “Yeah.”

Will has always appreciated her honesty.

“When's the caravan leave?”

“Within the hour. You'd better go on your own – Jack will have a fit either way, but at least he can't stop you if you've already arrived.”

Will tears onto the interstate, knuckles clenched pale on the steering wheel. She's out of Baltimore as soon as she arrives – throws overnight necessities in a duffle, has the car started before she remembers. A hastily scribbled note on the kitchen counter.

_Away. Work. Will call._

There’s no time for discussion.

The crime scene is a daydream. A tiny, isolated farmhouse just past the Wisconsin border, ankle-high mowed grass and creeping juniper trees. Idyllic. The effect's ruined by the swarm of police, tall men in dark uniforms ordering and marching. A mother in the gravel roadway, made small by grief. No husband, boyfriend, girlfriend. No children.

None born, at least.

Without her temporary badge Will’s denied access past the wind-whipped yellow tape. Will grinds her teeth. Bodies parting for her was a kind of power. She was _included._ Now the officers stare with poorly concealed amusement as Will fumbles out her phone and sweat beads her forehead and the goddamn baby _won't stop thrashing_. Trying to run away, but all it does is ramp her irritation higher.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

“I need to see Agent Katz.”

Every wasted minute burns hot oil in her brain.

Beverly’s on the porch less than a minute after the officer enters the house to retrieve her. Brown leather jacket tied around her waist, arms glistening bare, hair unraveling from a ponytail, eyes shielded behind sunglasses. The woman inhabits death for a living, but today she looks weary.

“Hey. You good?” Her care is still a surprise.

“Just let me see it,” Will says.

One-story house, archaic farm design, decorated in gentle ocean blues. Will’s gaze drifts across Beverly’s shoulders as the woman leads her to the back, through an open bedroom door. Will smells congealed blood, decomposing flesh.

Out of the corner of an eye, she could be sleeping. On the bed, pregnant belly split wide and insides rearranged into a gruesome tableau. Cut from the umbilical cord, the unborn fetus lies on the pillow beside her head, barely larger than a grapefruit. The blood’s mostly contained to the soaked sheets, but a smattering has settled beneath the twin-size bed, where the victim tried to hide before the blow took out the back of her skull.

Will’s knees unfold. She’s in possession of enough self-awareness to make her fall appear graceful, intended. She kneels on the wooden floor, spine bent.

“Emily Gallagher. Twenty-nine. Looks like she lived alone, even though the mom claims they were close. No sign of the dog yet. Local police want the ex-boyfriend, but his alibi for the deaths so far is airtight.”

There’s a ringing in the room. Not a phone, because neither of them answer. Beverly’s voice echoes cave-hollow.

The past uncounted months of love and home and normalcy are instant, fragmented memory. Blood on the walls and death in her head, this is Will’s genuine, true life. Everything else was play.

It's comforting, in a way.

She lets the faint smell of the victim’s lavender perfume cancel out the stink of death before retreating a professional distance between herself and the body, still crouched. She doesn't trust herself to stand.

“Why didn't you tell me sooner?” she demands, harsher than intended.

“Because you were on leave,” Beverly answers, straddling a delicate line between calming and warning. “And the obvious.”

A killer of pregnant women.

Will’s distracted by a vibration near her thigh. Fumbling, she shucks her cell phone from her pocket.

 _Calling: Dr. Lecter._ She hasn't changed the name since she first programmed speed dial.

Beverly deduces the caller from Will’s expression. Her deep-set mouth examiners Will studious, cautious. “Do you want him here?”

A relatively harmless question, but the room’s closing in like a cage. Will’s chest has gone tight, the air suffocating, stale. She sucks a mouthful into her lungs but it does nothing to stabilize her center of gravity.

“Contrary to popular belief, I can take care of myself,” she snaps. She shoves the phone back in her jacket. “So unless you're going to throw me out, I want to be _alone_.”

Here it is, fear, making her clear and present. A heartbeat of a pause, and then she grunts out her best “please,” eyes averted to the corner. A disclaimer to soften, because anger never gets her what she wants.

A woman's destiny in this world: manipulation, pleading, kindness, and hacked to shreds by an angry man.

This is why she wanted to stay alone. Men slice pregnant women's bodies open on their beds, bash their skulls into scattered smithereens on the linoleum. Children die without knowing sun and air, or walk out their progression to join the victimized.

Beverly hasn’t moved, although her morale’s taken a hit from Will’s misplaced rage. “No one will judge you if you back out,” she says, sure, severe.

Will shakes her head.

Closes her eyes.

She did not die here.

Away from home, wrenched from security. Torn apart mindless, no tender care or practiced precision. Skilled, but sloppy. So much effort. Returned to her home, her bed, to serve a point, when she had finally bled out into the bucket he brought back with him, dumped onto the sheets.

Hatred, old and deep, but refined. Perfected.

She opens her eyes and is elbow-deep in a chest cavity. The victim’s. Seeing not through the perpetrator’s eyes, but hers. Will Graham’s. She’s scrambling to put the intestines back, the baby, Jack’s tugging at her arm hard enough to wrench from the socket, and Will punches him. Leaves a bloody mass on his cheek, Beverly’s voice raised and cracked -

She comes back to herself. Alone in the bedroom with a corpse, untouched, hands clean.

Will stands.

She follows the structure of the house, the mauve carpeting, to the single bathroom. She runs the tap water until it’s burning hot, splashes water on her face and washes her clean hands until they prickle red and raw.

She grips the laminate counter until her knuckles turn white. Searches out the door with her foot, slams it shut, and chokes down an alien sound. Maybe a scream.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. If anyone's still reading after all this time, I can't thank you enough, and I can't apologize enough for how long this chapter took. Some ill-timed personal stuff was the main obstacle, combined with actual writing difficulties, but either way, I promise a wait won't be this long again. I hope this extra long chapter was worth the time <3


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